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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26298784">what calls you home</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edgedancer/pseuds/Edgedancer'>Edgedancer</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Fantasy, But Not The Traditional Kind, Established Relationship, F/F, M/M, Mystery, Soul Bond, background Melanie/Georgie - Freeform, theyre about trust and you can have a lot, tim is a sexy lamp</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:08:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>41,455</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26298784</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edgedancer/pseuds/Edgedancer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Daisy Tonner and Basira Hussein, knights errant, are no strangers to hunting monsters. But when they come to the remote village of Magnus to investigate rumors of a rampaging dragon, they find themselves embroiled in a plot almost two centuries in the making. Elias Bouchard is the wizard of the Panopticon, the tower that looms over the village and surrounding area, and he's oddly unconcerned about the dragon that stole his apprentice. Sasha James, his other student, has a smile that feels... wrong. Melanie King, from the surrounding farms, seems to know far too much. And Daisy, struggling to control the curse that's haunted her since childhood, can't shake the feeling that she's being watched.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist &amp; Alice "Daisy" Tonner, pre-Jon/Martin - Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Rusty Quill Big Bang 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Warning for discussion of character death.</p><p>My partners in this event were beanestbean and another artist who wishes to remain anonymous, who both created incredible works of art. Like, seriously, you guys are amazing.</p><p>And of course, none of this would have happened without the folks at <a href="http://pilesofnonsense.tumblr.com">Piles of Nonsense</a>; they run a ton of Rusty Quill events, so go check them out!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Magnus was, in Basira’s opinion, far too remote a town to be so prosperous. Nestled at the foot of the great mountains that marked the western edge of the kingdom, it had taken her and Daisy two weeks to trek up the winding road from the sleepy village at the fork of the river, which was itself almost a week from the Great Highway. Most towns this far off the main roads were little more than a cluster of houses surrounded by farmland and pasture, perhaps a dedicated blacksmith or carpenter if the farmers were less self-sufficient than most. Magnus, in contrast, hosted a blacksmith, tannery, carpenter, and three inns. Three! There were towns on the Great Highway itself that had only one.</p><p>Basira glanced at the most recent inn they’d passed, which a cheerful sign named <em>Bennet’s Lodge</em>. The streets she and Daisy walked through were broad enough for two lords’ carriages to pass without smelling each other’s perfume, and they felt wider because they weren’t full, as though they’d been designed for more inhabitants than the town currently possessed.</p><p>Most of the townspeople who did pass by seemed to be heading in the same direction, a few horse-drawn carts entering the town and passing that way as well. For the most part, they seemed to be in good spirits, greeting each other warmly when they walked by, but Basira noted that every so often, someone would glance up at the sky worriedly before returning to their business.</p><p>She looked over at Daisy and found her staring into the distance, worrying at the crystal bracelet on her left wrist. Her head was tilted as though she was listening intently, and there was something almost tense about her posture, as if despite her faraway expression she was alert, hunting.</p><p>Basira followed her gaze and was unsurprised to find it fixed on a grey silhouette that loomed in the distance, perfectly framed between two mountains. Vast and red, the setting sun sat fat and low behind it, light glancing through something at the top of the tower like the glint in a huge, bloodshot eye.</p><p>The Panopticon was the reason for Magnus’ unusual prosperity—or, more accurately, its residents were. The mages of the Panopticon didn’t have the sheer power of the clerics of the Flame or the overwhelming numbers of the Hive. In fact, they’d been allowed to remain almost completely neutral in the skirmishing between rival lords because while their magical tradition was considered largely useless in combat, they were well known for removing curses.</p><p>“Daisy,” Basira said softly, but her partner kept staring as though she hadn’t heard. Gently, Basira caught the hand that was now clenched tightly around the crystal, and Daisy blinked, tearing her eyes from the tower.</p><p>“Sorry,” she murmured, squeezing Basira’s hand in her own comfortingly, and Basira frowned as she felt the indents in Daisy’s palm from holding the bracelet too tightly.</p><p>“You alright?”</p><p>“It’s nothing,” Daisy dismissed, pulling away. “Let’s just start looking into this dragon, alright?”</p><p>Basira bit back a sigh as Daisy strode forward, following the growing trickle of villagers. Soon enough they turned the corner into an open space, the perimeter of the square lined with wagons and carts. Townspeople bustled around the makeshift market, haggling with the farmers over produce.</p><p>Daisy plunged into the throng without discussion, and Basira followed, though she wasn’t quite sure where her partner was heading. They cut a straight path through the crowd, Daisy easily slipping between people while Basira was forced to push through conversations just to keep up.</p><p>Suddenly, though, Daisy dodged the basket on a frowning farmer’s arm only to jerk to a stop. Basira stopped beside her.</p><p>“The bracelet,” Daisy said, worry flickering in her eyes. “I must have pulled it loose—”</p><p>Basira swore quietly, starting to search the ground behind them. After a moment, she caught a dull glint on the dusty stone, but before she could grab it, the bracelet glanced off the boot of a passing townsperson and skittered away.</p><p>Basira followed the glittering white charm with her eyes, sighing in relief when it tapped against the wheel of a farmer’s cart and stopped. She caught Daisy’s hand and pulled her over, picking up the pace when she noticed the farmer jump down from her perch at the edge of the cart to pick up the bracelet.</p><p>The woman was barely taller than Basira and slim, though her muscles were clear even beneath the sleeves of her plain black blouse. Her dark hair was cut off bluntly at the jaw, and her eyes were sharp and curious as she turned the bracelet over in her hands, examining the carved flower on the crystal.</p><p>“That’s mine,” Daisy told her as they broke through the crowd and approached the stall.</p><p>“It’s pretty,” the woman replied with a smile, handing the bracelet back to Daisy and leaning back against the side of her cart. A collection of wooden signs was nailed to the wood behind her bearing detailed paintings of various fruit surrounding their names. “You two here about the dragon, then?”</p><p>“We are,” Basira replied. Daisy held her wrist out to Basira, still determinedly studying the woman with a disgruntled look. Basira resisted the urge to roll her eyes.</p><p>“I’m Basira, and this is Daisy,” she said, tying the bracelet carefully. Daisy pulled her hand back to her side as soon as Basira had finished, and Basira felt a rush of fondness when she noticed the red tips of her partner’s ears.</p><p>“Melanie,” the woman at the stall introduced. She was smiling faintly at the exchange, but her gaze darted to the bracelet again before returning to Basira’s face, her eyes oddly intent.</p><p>“Have you seen it? The dragon?” Daisy asked, and Melanie scoffed.</p><p>“The whole town’s seen it,” she said. “Anyone who didn’t see the damn thing when it… when it took Jon sure as hell got a glimpse while it was trying to burn down the tower every other week.”</p><p>“Jon, was that a friend of yours?” Basira asked.</p><p>Melanie made a disgusted face. “He was a dick.”</p><p>Her voice cracked, and she looked away.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Basira said. Melanie nodded jerkily in acknowledgement, mouth tight.</p><p>“Just… make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”</p><p>“That’s what we’re here for,” Basira assured her. Well, that and the reward for killing the thing, but even wandering knights had to keep themselves alive somehow.</p><p>“Hang on.” Daisy was frowning. “This Jon, he’s the only one it’s killed?”</p><p>Melanie nodded, shrugging slightly. “It keeps attacking, but apparently Lord Bouchard’s wards are pretty solid, let him know when it’s coming so everyone at the tower can get inside. Then they just wait for it to get bored and go away.”</p><p>“What about the townspeople?” Basira asked sharply. “The farms?”</p><p>Melanie just shrugged, “Honestly, I’m not sure it even notices we exist.”</p><p>“I… see,” Basira said thoughtfully. She’d heard of dragons being drawn to magical hotspots before, but for it to attack a single spot for months on end with no reward and a thousand easier targets scattered around the countryside? Bouchard must have something special at that tower.</p><p>“Oh!” Melanie said, straightening and cupping her hands around her mouth as she stared at something behind them. “Martin! Over here!”</p><p>Basira turned. On the other side of the market, a tall, messy-haired young man blinked in their direction, eyes going wide, before starting toward them. He was too broad to simply slip through the crowd, but people made way for him with nods and smiles of greeting. He nodded back at each of them politely, a forced sort of half-smile fixed on his face.</p><p>“Hello, Melanie,” he said when he reached them. His voice was pitched higher than Basira had expected from such a large man, and pinched with some emotion—anxiety? Dislike? “Where’s Georgie?”</p><p>“She’s buying flour. But Martin, look, they’re here to kill the dragon,” Melanie told him. Martin blinked and turned to look them over, nervous eyes taking in Basira’s sword and mail, Daisy’s languid slouch like a waiting predator.</p><p>“Good,” he said, and Basira got a second surprise: his tone was eager, almost vicious. At her side, she saw Daisy straighten in interest.</p><p>But a moment later, Martin was blinking and regaining that anxious grin.</p><p>“Right, well, if you’re alright to wait for me to pick up a few more things, I can walk you up to the Panopticon? Make sure Tim doesn’t try to, ah—shoot you, before you can speak to Lord Elias.”</p><p>“Sure,” Basira said with a reassuring smile. At her side, Daisy had actually gotten tenser, and Basira wondered what exactly she’d noticed about Martin, who seemed largely harmless. Wanting a dragon dead wasn’t exactly unusual, especially if it had been harassing his home for weeks.</p><p>“Georgie will have the delivery up tomorrow morning on our way home,” Melanie told Martin. “Unless you want to take it now?”</p><p>Martin shook his head.</p><p>“I’ll have quite enough to carry as it is,” he replied, moving to the adjacent wagon to pick out vegetables.</p><p>“Martin is the cook at the Panopticon,” Melanie explained when he was gone. “I’m honestly a bit surprised he’s stayed on so long, what with the dragon and all, but I guess Bouchard still pays even if he is an ass.”</p><p>She didn’t seem concerned about someone hearing her badmouthing the local lord, and Basira took a moment to wonder whether he was universally unpopular or if Melanie just wasn’t the type to worry about others’ opinions of her.</p><p>Melanie did seem <em>thoughtful</em>, though, at that comment about Bouchard paying. Basira studied the aggressive haggling of the townspeople around them, the frowns on the farmers’ faces. Even with the town and the crop miraculously unmolested, these people must have survived on the custom provided by visitors to the Panopticon. With rumors of a marauding dragon spreading, the flow of travelers had clearly dried up.</p><p>Basira had spent the first five years of her knighthood serving at the queen’s court, winning tournaments, tracking down bandits who usually just turned out to be starving peasants, and steadily working her way to a peerage. Ever since she’d joined Daisy as a knight errant, hunting monsters instead of criminals, Basira had been paid worse, fed worse, and hurt worse than she ever had at court.</p><p>But she’d never slept better.</p><p>Setting her jaw, Basira turned to look at Daisy and found her glaring up at the Panopticon again. The sun had begun to set in earnest, lining the plain grey stone of the tower in golden fire.</p><p>“Hate that thing,” Melanie said, following her gaze. “Ruins the sunsets.”</p><p>“It feels like it’s watching,” Daisy growled. Basira blinked, surprised, but Melanie was nodding in agreement.</p><p>“Took me months to get used to that feeling, the locals just shrug like it’s perfectly normal,” she said. “I guess it’s the point, though, isn’t it? Supposedly with the right spell they can read lips from a hundred miles off, from the top.”</p><p>Basira shuddered, hoping that was just the kind of rumor that always grew up around wizards. Recalling some of the stories about Panopticon mages she’d heard at court, though, she had the sinking feeling it wasn’t. Their skill with removing curses was what made them valuable enough to tolerate despite their tendency to help the enemy as well, but she’d gotten the sense that it was their tendency to know things that lords preferred kept secret that motivated everyone to leave them alone and remote in the mountains.</p><p>“Right,” Martin said from behind them. “I’m… just about done, so…”</p><p>“Yeah,” Daisy replied, straightening. “Creepy eye tower. Lead on.”</p><p>Basira sighed, watching Daisy stalk after Martin with a frown and trying to remember when she had last seen her partner look so… hunted.</p><p>***</p><p>Martin led them out of the village, the neat road quickly giving way to a narrow, rocky path that wound steeply up the hill and into the thick woods. Daisy found herself breathing a quiet sigh of relief when the tower disappeared behind the thick summer foliage. The watched feeling didn’t go away entirely, but it shrank to something she can shove to the back of her mind as she surveyed the forest around her.</p><p>It was surprisingly intact when you remembered that the area was being menaced by a giant fire-breathing lizard. It wasn’t just that the trees weren’t burned; when Daisy listened, the quiet noise of distant wildlife was exactly what she’d expect from an unoccupied forest in this area, even though normally, the lesser predators cleared out when something as unusual as a dragon appeared to muscle in on their hunting grounds, or to hunt them.</p><p>If the dragon hadn’t been eating people, and it hadn’t been hunting animals, what <em>had </em>it been doing?</p><p>“So exactly how long ago did this dragon start attacking?” Basira asked, eyebrows pinching together. She was probably thinking along the same lines.</p><p>“Two months ago,” Martin replied, glancing at her. “I was beginning to wonder if Lord Elias’ messenger had gotten lost or something.”</p><p>“Messenger?” Daisy asked. She glanced at Basira, who shook her head minutely. They weren’t responding to a message; they’d already been heading in this direction after cleaning out a kelpie infestation at the river when they’d started to hear rumors from passing travelers of a dragon harassing a remote village.</p><p>“To the queen?” Martin said, confusion twisting the sentence to a question. “Asking her to send some knights.”</p><p>“We’re not in Queen Annabelle’s service,” Basira said slowly, meeting Daisy’s eyes. Remote though Magnus may, two months was plenty of time for a messenger on a horse to have left and returned. Had the queen just ignored the request?</p><p>“I… I guess something happened to the messenger after all,” Martin said uncertainly.</p><p>“I mean, you do have a dragon flying around and taking people,” Daisy pointed out, and Martin flinched visibly, face going dark.</p><p>“Were you friends with the man who was taken?” Basira asked.</p><p>Martin snorted wetly, and Daisy raised an eyebrow. This Jon must have been a character, for the people who knew him to mourn him so sincerely but refuse to call him a friend.</p><p>“No, Jon doesn’t… I mean—” He took a deep breath, seeming to pull himself together. “I work at the tower, and he’s Lord Elias’ apprentice, so we… knew each other.”</p><p>Basira ignored the stumbling, tone carefully professional. “Do you have any idea why the dragon might have fixated on the tower after it took him?”</p><p>“I mean, I don’t know much about dragons,” Martin began, “but I heard they’re attracted to magic?”</p><p>“Yep,” Daisy said. “But usually a couple wizards aren’t enough to make one this focused. Regular people have almost as much magic and they’re a lot easier to scoop it out of.”</p><p>“Oh,” Martin replied, looking thoughtful. “Well, there’s the Watcher’s Crown, I guess.”</p><p>“And what’s that, exactly?” Basira asked, skeptical. “Dragons aren’t actually <em>that</em> obsessed with gold, you know.”</p><p>“No, it’s a… gem thing, up at the top of the tower,” Martin explained. “It’s part of a local legend, actually, about Jonah Magnus.”</p><p>“Magnus—like the village?”</p><p>“Yeah, it used to be the noble house around here,” Martin said, making an expansive gesture that took in everything from the mountains to the distant ribbon of the river. “Jonah Magnus supposedly found a gigantic crystal up in the mountains somewhere and built it into the Panopticon so he could capture all the magic in the valley and become immortal. And, like, omniscient, I think.”</p><p>Daisy blinked. She wanted to scoff, but even with the thick canopy blocking out the sky, she could still feel eyes crawling up her neck.</p><p>“Obviously it didn’t work, but I guess the stone is really powerful… or it makes them more powerful, or… something,” Martin finished. “If anything up there is attracting a dragon, I guess…”</p><p>“I see,” Basira said slowly. Moving closer to Daisy, she lowered her voice. “Do you think that would be enough—"</p><p>She might have said more, then, but they turned another bend in the winding road and for a long moment Daisy’s mind went blank.</p><p>Daisy had done her fair share of stalking her prey. Sometimes that meant perching somewhere small and high up, watching the monster’s movement for days without letting it catch a whiff of her. Other times, it meant shadowing the creature’s footsteps, placing herself deliberately upwind for just long enough to let the beast drive itself mad with the knowledge that she was close behind and the terror that it would never find her before she found it.</p><p>She had thought the feeling that had been crawling down her spine since they’d crossed the river was that same sick terror her prey felt. But looking up at the Panopticon from its foot, Daisy knew that she had been wrong. Those eyes weren’t chasing her because they didn’t need to be. From the moment she’d entered their reach, they’d known she was coming straight to them.</p><p>“Daisy?”</p><p>Basira’s hand on her shoulder was as gentle as her voice, but it still made Daisy jerk in surprise.</p><p>“I’m fine,” she said gruffly. Did Basira really not feel the awful pressure of that gaze? Ahead of them, Martin had stopped and was looking at her sympathetically, like he knew how she was felt, but Basira just frowned in puzzled concern. “Let’s just go inside. Get this over with.”</p><p>Dragons weren’t even that great of a hunt, really. They were nearly impossible to beat in a straight fight: too big, too thick-skinned, and too likely to torch you before you ever got close enough to swing a sword at their necks. And of course, with anything that flew, there was no good way to chase it. The best way to hunt a dragon was to track down its nest and kill it in its sleep before it ever even knew you existed.</p><p>The whole process was more boring than anything, and a part of Daisy whispered that they should just leave these strange wizards to hide in their creepy tower; but if nothing else, she and Basira could use the bounty to get enough supplies to reach the next town. And besides, any hunt was better than nothing.</p><p>“Who goes there?”</p><p>Around the tower stood a low wall, perhaps two men tall. A man stood atop the wall next to a large wooden gate, a crossbow trained on the pair of them. Daisy tensed.</p><p>“Oh, for gods’ sake,” Martin muttered to himself before cupping his hands to his mouth and shouting. “Tim, they’re with me! They’re here to kill the dragon!”</p><p>“About fucking time,” the man yelled back, making Martin flinch and glance at Daisy and Basira.</p><p>“I’m so sorry about him,” he told them. “He didn’t used to be like this, but nowadays he’s as bad as Jon.”</p><p>He blinked after he’d said this, face crumpling for a moment. Then the gate creaked open, and Martin shook his head and led them through. There was a narrow cobblestone courtyard between the tower and the wall, and to one side Daisy could see a small herb garden. Martin brought them to a small door in the side of the tower, which opened into a high-ceilinged entrance chamber.</p><p>“I guess—” Martin stopped as a woman in the simple dress of a maid emerged from a side door, holding a piece of paper. He turned to her, that lukewarm smile flitting across his face. “Rosie—these are—”</p><p>“The knights, yes. Welcome to the Panopticon,” she said, smiling as she curtsied neatly. “Lord Elias will receive you in the observatory.”</p><p>“He could have warned Tim,” Martin muttered to her, and Rosie sighs, shaking her head with a fond smile.</p><p>“I don’t know who that boy thinks he’s protecting us from,” she said. “It’s not like he ever took Jon seriously, not that I can blame him—”</p><p>She broke off, glancing at Basira and Daisy, then looked back to Martin, shaking her head. “Well, go on, he’ll be waiting.”</p><p>Martin sighed and nodded, bringing them to a door at the far side of the room. The staircase was narrow, tightly winding its way up through the tower. Some of the doors they passed were open, and Daisy caught glimpses of rooms as they climbed it: a kitchen on the first floor; some kind of storage room full of strange, mismatched artifacts; a dusty library that spanned several levels. Daisy glanced at Basira as they passed it and smiled when she found her partner flicking longing glances through the doors.</p><p>Martin paused at the top of the staircase before a large wooden door. It was covered in intricate carvings, a strange pattern full of curves and points that somehow created the impression of hundreds, or even thousands, of tiny interlocked eyes staring out at them.</p><p>“Lord Elias can be… <em>off-putting</em>,” Martin said finally, eyeing the door with almost as much discomfort as Daisy felt. “He’s not a bad man, but just… be aware, I suppose.”</p><p>He turned to the door and squared his shoulders. Daisy managed to exchange a quick, unsettled glance with Basira before he reached out to push it open and light flooded through.</p><p>There was one last flight of stone stairs beyond, and Daisy climbed slowly, blinking to clear her eyes of the sudden wash of sunlight.</p><p>She generally avoided nobles and wizards alike; she hated people who though they deserved her obedience just because of who they were. All the same, she’d found herself in a few throne rooms and wizards’ studies over the years, and strangely, the observatory of the Panopticon resembled the former more than the latter, although in many ways it was nothing like any room Daisy had ever seen anywhere.</p><p>Instead of the plain grey stone that made up the rest of tower, the walls and ceiling of the observatory were a bubble of curved glass, supported by a skeleton of thin wooden beams and the shifting, pearlescent sheen of magic. Though the light from the setting sun in the west should have been blinding, it seemed to reflect up along the curve of the wall toward the center of the room, where a great round crystal was set in the ceiling and glowed like a miniature sun, seeming to diffuse the light somehow, collecting and scattering it so that the whole room was as bright as a midsummer day.</p><p>Directly below the great crystal sat a chair of pale wood, carved with the same unsettling pattern as the door. Strangely, it faced away from the entrance at an angle, like the subjects its monarch expected to receive would fly in through the eastern window. It was also empty.</p><p>“Welcome to the Panopticon.”</p><p>The voice was light and honeyed, with the sort of cultured accent that came standard on the spoiled lords who danced at court and couldn’t tell one end of a sword from the other. Daisy turned to find a man turning away from the rail by the western window to face them. He was a small man, but dressed in a finely-tailored green silk tunic and an intricately embroidered gold doublet, black breeches and heeled leather boots, he stood as though he were the tallest person in the room. His eyes, the brightest green Daisy had ever seen on a human, passed quickly over Martin, sweeping thoughtfully over Basira before catching and lingering on Daisy. And then he smiled, slow and fascinated.</p><p>“Martin,” he said, without breaking his stare, “Why don’t you introduce our guests?”</p><p>“R-right,” Martin stuttered. “Erm… Lord Bouchard, may I introduce Sir Basira Hussein and Sir Daisy Tonner, knights errant?”</p><p>Bouchard gave them a shallow nod of acknowledgement, and Daisy suppressed a sigh as she bowed from the waist, Basira’s mail gently ringing as she did the same.</p><p>“I have heard of the two of you,” Bouchard said as they straightened.  “Especially you, Sir Tonner. I understand that you are not inexperienced with dragons?”</p><p>“I’ve killed a couple,” Daisy replied. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Basira suppressing a wince and added, “My lord.”</p><p>Bouchard smirked, though Daisy couldn’t tell if it was at her slip in courtesy, her blunt phrasing, or just some inscrutable wizard humor.</p><p>“I’m delighted to hear it,” he purred. “When the beast is defeated and my poor apprentice can be put to rest, it will be a weight off of all our minds. Don’t you agree, Martin?”</p><p>“I… yes, Lord Elias,” Martin said, sounding choked.</p><p>“We may not be able to recover a body, my lord,” Basira said, uneasy. Daisy resisted the urge to snort. After two months of the decay, even if the dragon hadn’t eaten the body yet for some reason, it wasn’t going to make for the most dignified funeral.</p><p>“Perhaps not,” Bouchard replied, tilting his head, “but Jon always was… protective. I would imagine that the knowledge that the tower and village are no longer under threat due to his actions would be deeply important to him.”</p><p>“Sorry—his actions?” Daisy asked. By her side, Basira was blinking in confusion—or maybe she’d just looked at that stone by accident.</p><p>“Lord Bouchard, we were under the impression the dragon was attracted by—”</p><p>“The Watcher’s Crown?” Bouchard asked, gesturing at the glowing gem in the ceiling. “Oh, I imagine that’s why it keeps coming back, yes, but it seems likely that poor Jon was the one to… awaken it, as it were.”</p><p>Martin, Daisy noticed, looked thrown by this, as though the possibility had never been brought up before.</p><p>“What makes you say that?”  Basira asked.</p><p>“Jon left the tower perhaps two weeks before the dragon attacked,” Bouchard explained. “He grew up to the west of here, in the foothills, and I believed he was visiting friends. But when he returned, he told me that he’d been up in the mountains. He claimed to have found something… revolutionary.”</p><p>“Claimed?” Daisy asked skeptically. “He didn’t show it to you? Or explain it?”</p><p>“Unfortunately,” Elias replied, “that was when the dragon appeared. Jon was.. strangely paranoid, in his last few months. He insisted that we speak outside the tower, on the observation deck. I hadn’t set the wards to alert me to something approaching from the air as that… hadn’t really been a problem before this, and neither of us were paying much attention to anything but the conversation. It just… scooped him up and flew off. I know a few basic protection spells, but my magic is not combat-oriented. There was nothing I could do.”</p><p>“That sounds… traumatic,” Basira said, eyeing Bouchard, who’d explained the events with a factual, even tone.</p><p>“Quite,” he confirmed with a nod, expression unchanged, though Daisy could have sworn she saw a glint of amusement in his eyes.</p><p>“In any case,” he continued, clapping his hands together, “if there are any resources you need, I will of course be happy to provide them. I have asked Rosie to prepare the guest quarters for your use, and if you would like to speak to any of my staff or to Miss James for more information, you’re welcome to.”</p><p>“Right, thanks,” Daisy replied, groaning internally. It did make sense to stay in the tower where the dragon kept showing up, but she really just wanted to get as far away from this strange little man and his piercing stare as possible.</p><p>“And—” Elias tilted his head. “My understanding is that it is the done thing to pay some… bounty, for a service such as the one you provide.”</p><p>“Yeah, for a dragon—” Daisy began, but Basira cut her off.</p><p>“I heard you’re good with curses?”</p><p>Daisy froze as Elias leaned forward slightly, smirking. “I am.”</p><p>“Right, well, we have something for you to take a look at once the job’s done,” Basira said brusquely.</p><p>“Gladly,” Elias said, green eyes seeming to drink in the sudden tension in Daisy’s body. Was he doing some magic to make his gaze feel so damn heavy? What the hell was he seeing, when he looked at her? “If that’s all…? Martin, would you show them to the guest rooms?”</p><p>“Yes, Lord Elias,” Martin replied, and Daisy started. She’d almost forgotten he was in the room.</p><p>Basira bowed to Bouchard, and Daisy hesitated for a moment before imitating her. Bouchard kept staring at her, that fascinated grin back on his face.</p><p>It was hard to turn her back on him to follow Martin and Basira out of the room. They trudged town a few flights of stairs in silence, Daisy studying the back of Basira’s head and trying to contain the thick knot of emotion rising in her throat. There was anger there, but also a deep well of confusion and hurt that she wasn’t about to spew in front of a stranger.</p><p>The rooms Martin showed them to were spacious, fresh purple flowers bursting from a vase on the little dining table in the outer room.</p><p>“Rosie works fast,” Martin explained, eyes darting quickly between them and then back to the floor with a cringe. “So your beds and stuff are probably set up already. I’ll be getting started on dinner for everyone soon, but if there’s anything else you’ll need?”</p><p>Daisy gave him a dismissive gesture and watched a flash of relief cross his face before Basira cleared her throat.</p><p>“Actually, could you ask the other student— Ms. James, right?— to meet us here? I’d like to see if she knows anything about whatever Sims was researching.”</p><p>“Of course,” Martin replied, making an awkward bow before quickly fleeing the room. As soon as the door clicked shut behind him, Daisy turned to Basira.</p><p>“What was that?” she demanded.</p><p>Basira didn’t pretend ignorance. “It’s getting worse, you know it is. And these people are supposed to be the best at fixing curses.”</p><p>“I don’t need to be—” Daisy stopped. Basira hadn’t hesitated for a moment, once Bouchard asked about bounties. “Is that why we’re here?”</p><p>Sighing, Basira took a seat at the table. Daisy planted herself in the next chair, irritation making her grit her teeth.</p><p>“I mean, there obviously really is a dragon,” Basira said tiredly. “But… I did have the curse in mind when I suggested following the rumors.”</p><p>“I hate being manipulated, Basira,” Daisy snapped, feeling again that prickle of eyes on her back. “You of all people—”</p><p>“I know!” Basira’s tone made Daisy flinch back; she’d never heard her partner sound so strained. “I hated doing it, but you refuse to get help—”</p><p>“So I’m supposed to let that creep look around in my head—”</p><p>Basira winced. “Look, I didn’t know he’d be like that, but you have to do something about this. You know it’s getting worse.”</p><p>“The bracelet—”</p><p>“It’s killing you,” Basira shouted, and Daisy’s mouth dropped open as she tried to find a response. Basira glared at her, but there were tears in the corner of her eyes. “You think I don’t see the way you flinch every time you have a flare? And I thought if it got really bad you’d <em>tell me</em>, but when I saw how tired you were, how slowly you got back up after that one with the manticore—”</p><p>She stopped, hands curling into fists on the table.</p><p>“I’m not going to just watch you die,” she insisted quietly, gaze boring into Daisy’s eyes.</p><p>Daisy stared at her, mind whirling. Uncertainly, she reached out, taking Basira’s curled hand in both of hers.</p><p>“Basira, I—”</p><p>Someone knocked at the door.</p><p>Basira sighed, pulling her hand away, and stood. Daisy blinked, her own hands coming to fiddle with each other in her lap.</p><p>“Hello,” a light, thoughtful voice said when Basira opened the door.</p><p>“You must be Ms. James,” Basira greeted, opening the door wider in invitation. “Lord Bouchard’s apprentice.”</p><p>“Yes, I’m Sasha James,” the woman replied, making her way into the room. She was a small woman with frizzy black hair gathered into a messy ponytail behind her with a thick red and white ribbon. Her deep brown eyes stared out from behind thick horn-rimmed spectacles, her sharp, almost hungry gaze seeming to contrast her almost absent tone. “I’ve studied under Elias for several years now.”</p><p>“So you probably knew Jon Sims well,” Basira asked, pulling out a chair for her. Daisy took a deep breath, reminding herself that whatever else was happening, they were on a mission.</p><p>“Yes, he was already apprenticed to Elias when I arrived,” Sasha explained. She didn’t elaborate, and Daisy exchanged a glance with Basira.</p><p>Probably not especially close, then, just colleagues. Daisy tried to suppress her frustration. It sounded like this Jon hadn’t been close to anyone—even people like Martin and Melanie, who obviously cared about him. Things like this were so much easier when the people the victim trusted could point them right to where they’d been last seen. If all she and Basira had was ‘the mountains,’ they could probably search for years and never figure out where he’d been.</p><p>“Do you have any idea what might have driven him to go up the mountains?”</p><p>“Yes,” Sasha replied. “Jon was extremely passionate about his research. He never took breaks.”</p><p>Daisy blinked. “So you think he went looking for something to do with his research?”</p><p>“Yes… But I’m sorry, I don’t know what he was researching,” Sasha answered. “Jon became very secretive in the last few months. Paranoid.”</p><p>So he hadn’t been like that all along? Maybe he’d found something, something that made him wary to trust the other residents of the tower. Elias had seemed suspicious enough; Daisy wouldn’t be surprised if he had a few skeletons in his wardrobe.</p><p>“I see,” Basira replied, frowning. “Is there… anything in these mountains that might have been interesting to an academic? I thought it was just wilderness.”</p><p>“Yes, there are a few places, actually,” Sasha explained, tilting her head. “There’s the old Magnus castle, of course, and the Archivist’s cottage.”</p><p>“The Archivist?” Daisy asked, wondering if this was something else Basira had known about the area and hadn’t told her, but her partner was frowning in confusion as well.</p><p>“Yes, I suppose that might be less well-known,” Sasha said thoughtfully. “Magnus’ magical research is quite famous, of course, but it actually grew in parallel with another branch, founded quite a bit earlier by a man called Jurgen Leitner.” Her voice twisted with distaste at this name. “He was an arrogant fool, trapping magic and creatures that he could never even <em>hope </em>to understand. It’s no wonder his experiments killed him in the end.”</p><p>“And the cottage was his?” Basira wondered.</p><p>“Yes, originally,” Sasha replied. “But it was actually renamed the Archivist’s cottage after the leaders of a later group that rediscovered his notes, but used some of Magnus’ methods of studying magic directly in order to experiment more… responsibly.”</p><p>“I assume that didn’t work, if it’s abandoned now,” Daisy mused.</p><p>“Yes, there are some rumors that Gertrude—the last Archivist—met a similar end,” Sasha replied. “Elias would know more—he was actually one of her apprentices until she died and he came to study under Lord Wright.”</p><p>“I see,” Basira said thoughtfully. “And… you think it’s possible that Jon was looking for this cottage and got lost?”</p><p>Sasha nodded. “Yes. I have never been there, but I understand that many Archivists have been… antisocial, and the path to the cottage was overgrown more than a century ago.”</p><p>“Makes sense,” Daisy responded. Bookish wizard goes looking for a secret library, gets lost in the mountains, stumbles across a dragon’s cave, probably takes something he shouldn’t, and the beast wakes up and comes to get it back, then refuses to go back to sleep. It was almost suspiciously neat, except that it might not have narrowed their search area at all.</p><p>“Thank you, you’ve been very helpful,” Basira told Sasha, standing to walk her to the door.</p><p>“Wait,” Daisy said before Sasha can rise from the chair. Daisy looked at Basira and took a deep breath. “You’re… you’ve trained under Lord Bouchard for years, yeah? You could spot a curse?”</p><p>“Yes, that is within my abilities,” Sasha answered, leaning forward intently. “Is there something you would like removed?”</p><p>“Not… not yet,” Daisy told her, looking down at the table where there was no chance of meeting Basira’s eyes. “Could you just… look, and tell me if it’s something you could handle? Or something… something Bouchard would have to deal with?”</p><p>“Yes, if that’s all you want.” Sasha looked… a trifle disappointed, and a part of Daisy wanted to snarl that she wasn’t just a convenient practice opportunity. But however odd Sasha James may have been, she didn’t make Daisy’s hackles rise the way Bouchard’s staring eyes had.</p><p>“Right then,” she said, nodding to Sasha. “Do you… do I need to do something?”</p><p>Sasha started to shake her head, then frowned. “Yes. Are you carrying something that would block magic?”</p><p>Daisy blinked in surprise, then wanted to roll her eyes at herself. If it could keep the curse in, why wouldn’t it keep people from seeing it?</p><p>“Yeah,” she said. “Sorry…”</p><p>She pulled the crystal bracelet off her wrist, setting it gently on the table and feeling oddly naked without it. The carved daisy on the charm faced up at her, a mirror to the old scar on her shoulder.</p><p>Sasha eyed it in fascination.</p><p>“Yes, that would do it. You may want to keep it away from Elias,” she joked. “He’d be desperate to study something like that… Anyway,” she continued, looking back at Daisy with a bit of humor still lighting her expression, “Look at me.”</p><p>Daisy met her eyes and then sucked in a sharp breath, pressing herself back in the chair. Sasha’s gaze had gone strange and predatory, the sort of look a monster got just before it lunges in for the kill. Daisy felt her magic throb as she longed to growl back, to puff up and prove that she was the bigger threat, and she tensed her muscles. This was not the time for a flare, no matter how hunted that piercing stare made her feel.</p><p>A familiar hand landed on her shoulder, and Daisy felt herself relaxing just a hair. Even if Sasha believed Daisy was prey, Basira would help set her straight.</p><p>Sasha hummed, the hungry gleam fading from her eyes. Daisy blinked and looked away, glancing up at Basira, who squeezed her shoulder reassuringly from where she’d moved to stand behind Daisy’s chair.</p><p>“So… you saw it?” Daisy asked. “Was it bad?”</p><p>“Yes, it’s quite a nasty one,” Sasha replied. “Tangled into you worse than anything I’ve seen before. Almost as much as she is,” she added, nodding at Daisy—no, at Basira behind her.</p><p>“Me?” Basira’s tone was steady, but her hand on Daisy’s shoulder had gone tense. “Even if I knew how to curse someone, I wouldn’t do that to Daisy.”</p><p>“Yes, that’s rather what I mean,” Sasha said, tilting her head. “It’s quite common, when you trust someone, for a bit of who they are to get tangled up in you. Well, their magic to get tangled up in yours, but…”</p><p>“No difference,” Daisy realized. It was one of the basic principles of using magic, even with the limited spells she knew; your magic was what made you <em>you</em>, the part of you that drained away when you died. But Daisy had never heard of this sort of tangling before.</p><p>“Yes, exactly,” Sasha agreed. “Between most people the strings are quite narrow; even yours wouldn’t be visible to a mage who wasn’t linked to the Crown, and the two of you have one of the strongest entanglements I’ve seen.”</p><p>She tilted her head, smiling.</p><p>“It’s rather sweet, actually.”</p><p>Daisy could feel herself blushing, and Basira’s hand twitched on her shoulder. When she glanced back, her partner was frowning, and Daisy wasn’t quite sure what she was thinking.</p><p>Had this bond been even stronger, before she’d found out why Basira had led them here? Or maybe earlier than that, whenever Basira had decided that it was better to trick her than talk to her, that this damn curse had turned Daisy into some kind of liability?</p><p>“So, the curse,” Daisy said, meeting Sasha’s eyes and willing her not to acknowledge the abrupt subject change, “would you be able to cure it?”</p><p>With a regretful smile, Sasha shook her head. “Not unless you want quite a bit of you ripped out with it. You’d have to go to Elias.”</p><p>“Right,” Daisy replied, looking down. “Thanks anyway.”</p><p>“My pleasure,” Sasha demurred, standing. “If that’s all?”</p><p>“Yeah, think so,” Basira replied, walking her to the door. “Thank you again.”</p><p>Sasha smiled at her, pausing in the doorway, and a touch of unease ran up Daisy’s spine for a moment.</p><p>“One other thing,” Sasha said. “You ought to be careful when you go hunting. Even before the dragon, there were rumors of monsters in the woods.”</p><p>“I think we can handle some monsters,” Basira said, and Sasha smiled at her.</p><p>“Of course,” she replied. “But I think I’d like to get to know you better.” Her eyes flicker to Daisy, expression turning mischievous. “I’d hate for something out there to eat you before I get the chance.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Daisy said. “We’ll do our best.”</p><p>Sasha nodded and turned away, and Basira shut the door behind her with a sigh. Daisy studied the tired lines of her, the way her hand lingered on the dark wood for a long moment before she began to turn. There was something wounded in the way her gaze met Daisy’s, as though the brittle frustration from earlier had cracked like chapped skin to reveal the hot blood underneath.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” she said, so gently, and Daisy suppressed the urge to flinch.</p><p>“It’s fine,” she replied, wincing as the words came out too defensive to be believed. Taking a deep breath, she tried again. “I needed to hear it—what Sasha said, and… how you were feeling.”</p><p>“Still,” Basira insisted. “You were right, I shouldn’t have lied to you. I should have trusted that you’d listen.”</p><p><em>You should have, </em>part of Daisy whispered, <em>so I could have made sure we never came here.</em></p><p>But that was the problem, wasn’t it?</p><p>Daisy sighed, standing and rounding the table to take Basira’s hand. “Basira, I love you, and I know you love me too, but part of that means that you know me. Maybe I would have listened, but we both know I can be a bit… unreasonable, about this.”</p><p>“Maybe,” Basira said, meeting her eyes and then looking away.</p><p>“Coming here was the right decision,” Daisy said, the words tasting bitter—but if it made Basira feel better, it would be worth it. “Bouchard and this eye magic might creep me right out, but it does seem like he knows what he’s doing.”</p><p>“So, when this is done, you’ll let him fix it?” Basira prompted. Daisy sighed.</p><p>“Deal,” she said, leaning in to slide her arms around Basira’s waist and bury her face in the crook of her neck, breathing in the scent of armor polish and sweat. “But if he tries anything…”</p><p>“I’ll run him through,” Basira whispered in her ear, smooth and certain, and Daisy shivered, then smiled. Basira was lovely when she let herself be dangerous, all cold, focused purpose.</p><p>Daisy bared her teeth against Basira’s shoulder as the feeling of unseen eyes crawled up her neck before it was replaced by the brush of Basira’s callused fingers.</p><p>Whatever was waiting for them in this strange wood, dragons or formless monsters, Sasha or Bouchard, Daisy was dead certain it didn’t stand a chance against the two of them.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Basira woke slowly, the morning light seeping between the wooden shutters of the window. Beside her, Daisy rolled over in her sleep, the arm that had been slung across Basira’s chest nearly elbowing her in the face as she turned, and Basira smiled helplessly.</p>
<p>Sliding carefully out of bed, Basira dressed quietly and quickly, wrapping her hair using one of the thick black headscarves she wears under her helmet. If they were very lucky that day, they might end up fighting a dragon, after all, and it was always good to have some plate between you and those claws.</p>
<p>Daisy had shifted again while Basira was dressing, ending up with her limbs splayed across the bed and her face buried in the pillow. Basira leaned down to brush a lock of loose golden hair out of her mouth, and Daisy sighed without waking.</p>
<p>She’d been an exceptionally light sleeper when Basira had first met her, taking hours to settle and startling awake at the slightest noise. But as her attacks had grown more frequent, exhaustion had made her sleep easier and deeper, though even now she was incredibly active.</p>
<p>Basira padded into the front room, the grey stone of the tower cold on her bare feet. There was only one bedroom in the guest quarters they’d been given, which wasn’t a problem except that no one had asked them, making it more than slightly creepy. It was one thing for Bouchard to have used whatever powers of divination he apparently had to check out visitors to his tower, and entirely another for him to be using them to check out their relationship.</p>
<p>As she pulled on her boots, Basira thought over the situation. She supposed Bouchard could simply have heard about them in rumors—they were hardly secretive about the nature of their partnership—but if he hadn’t been absolutely sure, Basira thought he probably would still have asked, if only to make them uncomfortable. The assumption felt like some kind of power play, like he wanted everyone to be aware that he could know whatever he wanted at any time.</p>
<p>The flowers from the day before were wilting slightly already, she noticed as she placed the vase gently on the floor by the wall. Carefully, she lifted the small table and moved it to the corner, holding her breath at the hollow clack of the legs hitting the stone. There was no sound from the bedroom, though, and Basira returned the vase to the table before drawing her sword.</p>
<p>Though Basira hadn’t felt whatever strange power Daisy and Melanie had spoken of the day before, the strange inhabitants of the tower were starting to make her uneasy. Sasha had seemed nice enough, but the way she had examined Daisy had made some protective part of Basira nervous; Bouchard, too, had watched her partner with eyes that seemed far too interested.</p>
<p>She wondered what about Daisy had caught their interest. Maybe there was something about the curse that was unusual? But even that wasn’t necessarily a reason to let down her guard; Basira had seen people, especially wizards, do surprising things out of pure academic interest. Still, it was probably the most benign explanation, and the most likely.</p>
<p>Carefully, Basira ran her hands over the blade of her sword, using a familiar spell to blunt the edge before falling into a basic guard position. The stances came naturally after years of practice, the weight of the sword providing a light, familiar burn as she began to move faster, dark blade seeming to drink in the light of the room.</p>
<p>Once upon a time, Basira had gone on a quest far to the north, where on certain days in the depths of winter, the sun never rose at all. The quest had been on behalf of a rich baroness who had foolishly found herself in debt to the Host, a debt for which they had demanded payment in the form of her teenage son. Basira and her fellow knights had carved their way through the clergy and congregation of a strange mass, falling silent and still under a sunless, starless sky, and when Basira alone had reached the altar she had fought the leader of the Church, who wielded a strange, black sword that he’d been moments from plunging straight into the heart of that child.</p>
<p>It was a strange place, but a good sword, and Basira had taken it with her when she and the child left, and no monster she’d fought since had seen it coming.</p>
<p>She practiced for maybe half an hour before Daisy emerged from the bedroom, white teeth showing in a wide yawn as she finished up her braid. Basira put her sword down and accepted the pins Daisy handed her, careful securing the braid to the crown of Daisy’s head and capturing a few flyaway hairs. She’d once asked Daisy if she’d ever thought about cutting her hair, since she never seemed to wear it down except to sleep. Daisy had simply shrugged and said she liked the routine of maintaining it.</p>
<p>While Daisy stretched, Basira poured herself a cup of water from the brass pitcher they’d been left. There was a hint of lemon in the water, and it was refreshingly cold; glancing at the pitcher, Basira noted a carved spell to keep the contents cool. Setting the cup down, she met Daisy’s smile with a teasing one of her own and stepped away from the table, sliding into a defensive stance.</p>
<p>She and Daisy didn’t spar, exactly; Daisy was almost as deadly unarmed as Basira was with a sword, and it wouldn’t have been much of a challenge. What they did was more like a dance, each of them watching carefully to predict each other’s movements.</p>
<p>Eventually, they were interrupted by the soft <em>ding!</em> of the dumbwaiter as it arrived. Daisy sniffed the air and smiled, going to retrieve a tray laden with two steaming plates of food and a bowl of fresh cut peaches between them.</p>
<p>“I guess these are part of Melanie’s delivery,” Basira said, returning the table to its proper place so they could eat.</p>
<p>Daisy nodded, setting the tray down, and then frowned at the table.</p>
<p>“Basira, did you move my bracelet somewhere?” she asked slowly.</p>
<p>“No, it… it wasn’t out here,” Basira replied, worry crawling down her spine. “It’s not in the bedroom?”</p>
<p>“I don’t think I put it back on after Sasha left,” Daisy said, but she strode to the bedroom to check. Basira thought back to the previous night and realized with a sinking feeling that Daisy was right. After a few minutes of shuffling, she emerged, mouth tight with worry. “It’s not there.”</p>
<p>“You’re sure?” Basira asked.</p>
<p>Daisy nodded, then sniffed the air again, expression darkening. “It’s too strong.”</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>“Someone’s been in here, more recently than last night,” Daisy explained, already turning back to the bedroom. Basira followed and found her gathering up her things, shrugging her mail hauberk over her head. Scooping up the pouch with her plate and tying it to her belt (bless business-minded wizards for space expansion spells), Basira frowned.</p>
<p>“Any idea who?”</p>
<p>Daisy shrugged, tucking her last knife into her boot and straightening. “It’s someone I’ve met before, but beyond that, no idea. Not someone I know well.”</p>
<p>“Probably someone in the tower, then,” Basira concluded as they left the bedroom. Sasha had been the only one to actually remark on the bracelet, but she’d warned them that Elias might want such a thing as well. Or maybe the thing had been stolen by one of the non-magicians, just because it was jewelry that had been left relatively unguarded.</p>
<p>Daisy apparently thought the latter was more likely, turning left when they entered the stairwell to go down, toward the kitchen and servants’ quarters. Basira followed; Daisy tended to have good instincts about this sort of thing.</p>
<p>At the same time, Basira could see the tension starting to grow in Daisy’s steps, hear the way her breathing was quickening even though her pace was measured. Anger? Worry?</p>
<p>When they reached the first floor, Daisy turned off the staircase and threw the door to the kitchen wide. Over her shoulder, Basira saw Martin and Rosie look up in shock, Martin with a damp rag in one hand and a pot in the other, Rosie and Tim sitting at a small table with rough wooden bowls in front of them.</p>
<p>“Who’s been in our rooms?” Daisy demanded, growling, and Rosie and Martin paled while Tim frowned, putting down his spoon.</p>
<p>“I… I cleaned them out, last night,” Rosie stuttered. “Is there something wrong?”</p>
<p>“Something of ours has been stolen,” Basira explained flatly, and Rosie blanched.</p>
<p>“I haven’t been in since you arrived!” she protested.</p>
<p>Tim stood, moving between her and Daisy. Brave man.</p>
<p>“None of us are thieves,” he said firmly, his tone civil though Basira could see a vein in his jaw pulsing. “If you’re sure that the object hasn’t been misplaced…”</p>
<p>“It wasn’t,” Daisy snapped before turning to Basira, frustration lining her eyes. “Not one of them.”</p>
<p>“Sasha or Bouchard, then?” Basira asked, keeping her tone reasonable. Daisy seemed frustrated, but not too angry. Maybe if they could stay focused, they could find the bracelet before anything happened.</p>
<p>“Sasha’s no thief, either,” Tim objected, a hint of hostility entering his voice.</p>
<p>Basira blinked. Clearly there was some special connection between him and Sasha, but even so, no defense of Lord Bouchard? And there had been Martin’s warning the previous night, and Melanie’s derision.</p>
<p>But they could figure out the local politics later. For now, Basira looked back at Daisy.</p>
<p>“She didn’t even ask to look at it, last night,” Basira pointed out. “If they were interested, it would have been normal enough to just ask.”</p>
<p>Daisy frowned in thought. “Has anyone else been into the tower since last night?” she asked Tim.</p>
<p>“Just Melanie and Georgie with the delivery,” he replied. “But they were with Martin, helping him unpack. They couldn’t have been sneaking around.”</p>
<p>Martin, though, is shaking his head. “Tim, Melanie never comes into the Panopticon.”</p>
<p>Tim just shrugs. “It’s been months, I figured she’d gotten over whatever fight she had with Sasha.”</p>
<p>“She wasn’t here, though,” Martin replied, realization in his voice. “Not in the kitchen, anyway. It was just Georgie.”</p>
<p>Basira glanced at Daisy, remembering the way Melanie’s eyes had flicked repeatedly to the bracelet in the market.</p>
<p>“It was her,” she said slowly, and then, turning to Tim, “when was this?”</p>
<p>“They came in right at sunrise,” Tim replied, looking shocked. “But Melanie—”</p>
<p>“So they’ll be long gone,” Daisy growled, irritated. Her left hand darted to her right wrist, then clenched into a fist around it, and Basira tensed. Daisy had developed a habit of fiddling with the bracelet when she could feel the curse stirring.</p>
<p>“Look, I’ve known Georgie and—and so have Martin and Rosie, for years,” Tim objected. A small, off-task part of Basira’s mind noted the way his face twisted as he stuttered and wondered what he’d been about to say. “She wouldn’t steal anything from the tower, and she wouldn’t be the—the distraction while Melanie did it either—”</p>
<p>“Do you know where they’d have gone?” Daisy demanded, stepping into his space, and he jerked—not flinching, Basira realized, but stepping back to widen his stance in preparation for an attack.</p>
<p>“I’m not going to send some entitled knights after people who just—”</p>
<p>“Tim!” Martin scolded, but Daisy was snarling, and Tim yelped and stumbled back.</p>
<p>“What the <em>hell</em>,” he gasped, hands darting to his face, where marks like those from claws were starting to bead with blood.</p>
<p>Basira stepped forward, cursing mentally as she put herself between him and Daisy.</p>
<p>“Daisy, you’re in control,” she murmured, shifting to block out Daisy’s vision of Tim completely. Behind her she could hear Rosie, Martin and Tim, the latter’s voice raised, but she ignored them. “Don’t listen to the blood.”</p>
<p>Daisy sucked in a rattling breath, meeting Basira’s eyes for a moment, and to Basira’s surprise her expression was still more impatient than angry.</p>
<p>Basira turned to check on the room. Tim was still growling something, but he wasn’t making any aggressive moves, instead trying to fend off Rosie as she tried to dab at his face. Both his eyes were open and undamaged, and the cuts didn’t look especially deep; Basira sighed in relief.</p>
<p>“Is… is that the curse you wanted Elias to break?” Martin said quietly. He was standing closer to Basira than to Tim, and when he glanced at Daisy, his eyes were worried.</p>
<p>Basira nodded brusquely. “The bracelet, the one that was stolen, it… manages it.”</p>
<p>Martin tilted his head thoughtfully. “Melanie was cursed, too, it’s why she came here. She left after seeing Elias, and we all though she’d been cured, but she was always… volatile.”</p>
<p>Daisy was apparently calm enough to listen, because she snorted. She always dismissed any suggestion that the curse made her out of control, and Basira thought back to that impatient expression with unease.</p>
<p>“We need that bracelet back,” Basira said to Martin, voice even. “If she’s the same, we can tell her where we got it, but…”</p>
<p>Glancing at Daisy again with concern, Martin nodded.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>After disappearing to prepare for a few minutes that left Daisy almost bouncing on her feet, Martin led them out of the back gate to a narrow trail that wound its way up into the hills.</p>
<p>“Any reason you couldn’t have just given us directions?” Daisy snapped after half an hour of walking. Martin looked at her and Basira heard Daisy huff irritably as he slowed down.</p>
<p>“Georgie probably won’t let you in if you’re by yourselves,” he said slowly. “Also, it’s not usually a good idea to wander the back hills without someone who knows them pretty well. People who wander too far get lost for months, or sometimes just… disappear.”</p>
<p>“It can’t be that confusing,” Basira said, frowning. “There’s a clearly marked trail.”</p>
<p>Martin shrugged. “There are a lot of trails, and they never seem to lead where you think they will. Even the locals don’t usually go too far past where Georgie lives, and the place where it gets dangerous definitely isn’t marked.”</p>
<p>“Right,” Daisy said, frowning. “Just… lead on, then.”</p>
<p>Basira hung back a few steps with Daisy.</p>
<p>“Sasha said something about monsters in the mountains,” she remembered. “Is there something like grindylows that shows up in woodland?”</p>
<p>Daisy frowned, looking thoughtful. She had a lot more personal experience with monsters than Basira, who had mostly just seen illustrations in books before she’d run off with Daisy, but Daisy’s voice was hesitant when she replied.</p>
<p>“Will-o-the-wisps, maybe? I’ve never heard of any this far south, though.”</p>
<p>Stepping forward, Basira asked Martin, “The people who come back after they get lost, do they see things? Strange lights, that sort of thing?”</p>
<p>Martin tilted his head. “I mean, they tell all sorts of wild stories? But most of the time it just sounds like they didn’t find a stream for a while and started seeing things, if they noticed something unusual at all. From what I’ve heard, most of them don’t even realize how much time’s passed, they think it’s only been hours or days instead of weeks or months.”</p>
<p>Basira glanced back at Daisy, who shook her head with a small shrug. No idea, then; finding the dragon might be more difficult than they’d expected. She wondered why Sasha hadn’t been more specific, if this phenomenon was more common than a few wild stories, like she’d made it sound.</p>
<p>“Aren’t there… maps, or something?” she asked a short while later, but Martin shrugged.</p>
<p>“Apparently Jon tried to make one as a child,” Martin said, voice fond. “He grew up a bit closer to the Panopticon and found some in his grandmother’s things with landmarks, rivers, that sort of thing, but he said they ‘didn’t work’ anymore, tried to mark out the paths. I think that’s how he met Georgie.”</p>
<p>“They knew each other?” Basira asked, surprised.</p>
<p>Martin nodded, looking slightly morose. “They grew up together, and I think they courted for a while.”</p>
<p>“Melanie didn’t seem to think too highly of him,” Daisy observed.</p>
<p>“He stopped talking to Georgie after he came to study at the Panopticon,” Martin explained. “I’m not exactly sure why, but I guess Melanie probably knew about it? She always used to snap at him, anyway, and whatever happened might have been his fault. Jon could be… prickly.”</p>
<p>He looked increasingly melancholy, and Basira decided to change the subject.</p>
<p>“How do you know the way so well?” she asked. “I didn’t think you were from here.”</p>
<p>“Georgie never used to make deliveries, I think it took too long before Melanie moved in and started helping out,” he explained. “So I’d come up every other week in the summer to get the Panopticon’s supply.”</p>
<p>Over the next several hours, Basira started to understand what Martin meant about the trails not making sense. They never proceeded along a straight path and often twisted and turned for no reason she could discern, occasionally seeming to simply end before picking up again after a brief stretch of forest. In other places, it met different trails, often several at once in a haphazard way that would have made giving turn directions complicated. At least once, Basira could have sworn they arrived at the same intersection they’d just left, but Martin hadn’t even blinked, just continuing onto one of the trails.</p>
<p>Basira had exchanged a glance with Daisy and found her looking equally disoriented. Despite the frustration, though, there were no more flares, as though the curse knew that Daisy was on the hunt as best she could be, though that thought hardly bore thinking about.</p>
<p>“Here we are,” Martin said finally as they emerged from the woods at the base of a broad rise. A thatch-roofed cottage sat at the bottom of the hillside, which was covered in neat rows of trees, the polar opposite of the increasingly wild forest they’d been trekking through.</p>
<p>Martin waved for Basira and Daisy to wait as he approached the door and knocked. There was a scratching noise and the low murmur of a woman’s voice. Then the door opened.</p>
<p>The woman who answered the door—Georgie, Basira assumed—didn’t look surprised to see Martin, or even Daisy and Basira. She was fairly short, heavyset with short, curly black hair, and she was cradling a huge grey cat to her chest.</p>
<p>“You’d better come in,” she sighed, stepping aside to let Martin through. Basira took Daisy’s hand as Martin entered the room; when they stepped forward, Georgie met Basira’s eyes. She didn’t get in their way, but something in her gaze was arresting.</p>
<p>“I’m Georgie,” she said finally.</p>
<p>“Basira, and this is Daisy,” Basira replied. She could feel Daisy’s pulse pounding, and she squeezed her hand gently, unsure herself whether the gesture was reassurance or warning. “We’re looking for—”</p>
<p>“The bracelet Melanie stole, yeah,” Georgie replied, leaning against the door and turning to Daisy. “I took a look at that, and if your curse is anything like Melanie’s, it won’t be doing you much good.”</p>
<p>“It keeps the curse from clawing someone to death,” Daisy said irritably, and Georgie tilted her head.</p>
<p>“Fair enough, I guess,” she said. Stepping aside, she gestured for them to enter, then shut the door behind them and let the cat down gently. It twined between her legs for a moment before padding away.</p>
<p>“Hello, Admiral,” Melanie murmured as it jumped into her lap and started to knead. She was slouching on a large wooden chair placed near the hearth; when Georgie sat down next to her, it stepped over to curl in her lap.</p>
<p>Martin was sitting on a bench on the other side of the hearth, and after a beat Basira went to sit next to him, Daisy perching on the narrow remaining space.</p>
<p>“Sorry about this,” Melanie said, reaching into a pouch at her waist. She pulled out the bracelet and tossed it to Daisy, who snatched it quickly out of the air with her free hand and slipped it onto her wrist with a relieved sigh.</p>
<p>“Where’d you get that, by the way?” Georgie asked. “I mean, it’s not really a solution, but…”</p>
<p>“Better than nothing,” Daisy agreed. “It was some traveling wizard, went by Antonio Blake, but I’m pretty sure it was a fake name.”</p>
<p>Georgie nodded, looking thoughtful, and for a moment the room was quiet except for the fire crackling in the hearth.</p>
<p>“Your curse,” Basira asked finally, “why didn’t Elias cure it?”</p>
<p>Melanie shrugged. “Said he couldn’t, that it was too deeply entangled. I figured he was full of shit, got myself thrown out of the tower arguing, but considering what happened last time Jon was here…”</p>
<p>“Wait,” Martin said, surprised. “Jon came <em>here</em>? Georgie, I thought you didn’t talk anymore.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, he stopped in on his way back down the mountain,” Georgie explained. “We’d started talking again a bit since he started working with Melanie.”</p>
<p>“Hang on, he stopped here after he’d woken the dragon?” Daisy asked. “Did he leave anything?”</p>
<p>“Just his map,” Melanie replied. “Jon didn’t bring much with him besides supplies—some notebooks, maybe, but anything he found he’d have shown Elias straight off. He didn’t have anything?”</p>
<p>“No,” Basira replied slowly.</p>
<p>“It must have gotten to Bouchard, too,” Melanie said to Georgie, who frowned.</p>
<p>“Or he knew about it all along. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised.”</p>
<p>Melanie smirks. “It is kind of his thing.”</p>
<p>“Hang on, it?” Basira asked.</p>
<p>“You really think <em>Elias </em>did something to Jon?” Martin demanded at the same moment.</p>
<p>Melanie and Georgie exchanged glances, and Georgie sighed.</p>
<p>“I’ll make some tea,” she said quietly, standing.</p>
<p>“You’ve lived around here longer than any of us,” Martin protested. “If there’s something… wrong in the tower—"</p>
<p>“I’ve made it a point to stay out of whatever goes on in that tower,” Georgie replied. “I let Melanie stay because she didn’t have a choice about dealing with them. But after what happened to Gertrude, anyone around here who deals with magic keeps their nose out of the Panopticon business, or else.”</p>
<p>“You’re a witch?” Basira asked, surprised.</p>
<p>“Yep,” Georgie replied, picking up the Admiral and settling him over her shoulder. He purred.</p>
<p>Daisy frowned. “What do you do?”</p>
<p>“I grow fruit,” Georgie replied.</p>
<p>“With… magic?”</p>
<p>Melanie grinned. “It’s really good fruit. Especially the peaches, they’re the best.”</p>
<p>“They really are,” Martin said when Basira raised an eyebrow.</p>
<p>“Jon and I learned magic together,” Georgie said. “It was fun, and even useful sometimes. But he wanted to dive right into all the esoteric mystery stuff, and I just wanted to live my life.”</p>
<p>Her eyes were sad, but her tone was businesslike.</p>
<p>“I’m not saying Jon deserved what happened, whatever it was,” she clarified. “But he knew his choices were risky, and I’m not going to make the same ones. Whatever you decide to do, keep that mind.”</p>
<p>And she stepped into the kitchen, swinging the door shut after her.</p>
<p>Daisy huffed, catching Basira’s eye. Her expression was clear. <em>Dramatic much?</em></p>
<p>“Don’t you judge her,” Melanie said sharply. “Georgie’s lost a lot. She’s allowed to take care of herself, but she’ll help anyone who’s willing to be helped and that’s more than anyone could expect from her.”</p>
<p>“She and Jon were… close, right?” Martin asked.</p>
<p>Melanie nodded. “He was the one who introduced us, when we realized I might have to be around for a bit longer.”</p>
<p>“Wait, what?” Martin replied. “I thought you stayed in Magnus because of Georgie.”</p>
<p>“What?” Melanie blinked at him. “No, that didn’t start for months. I stayed because Jon was trying to cure the curse.”</p>
<p>Daisy straightened like she’d been electrified, and Basira leaned forward. “He was trying to do what?”</p>
<p>“How did that even happen?” Martin asked. “Didn’t Elias turn you down? And didn’t you and Jon fight, like, every time you met?”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Melanie replied. “I left for a while when Elias threw me out, went looking for that castle people say is in the mountains somewhere to see if I could figure things out myself, but I never found it. So I came back after a couple months of camping and broke into the Panopticon library.”</p>
<p>“How?” Martin asked. “I get that Tim let you into the tower, but how’d you get past him before?  And I still don’t understand how you got to their room and back in the time it took for Georgie to unload without anyone noticing you.”</p>
<p>“And you never will,” Melanie replied, a grin splitting her face. “The only other person who knew was Jon, and I’m not gonna spread it around as long as I might need to get in again.”</p>
<p>“Sims knew?” Daisy asked. Melanie nodded, sighing.</p>
<p>“He caught me in the library that first time. Just got lucky, really. He started yelling at me or whatever, I got mad, the curse surged and burned his leg a bit—”</p>
<p>“That was <em>you</em>?” Martin yelped. “He said he tripped into the fireplace—”</p>
<p>“And you believed him?” Daisy asked. “<em>I tripped </em>is a ridiculously weak excuse. Who trips into a fireplace, leg first?”</p>
<p>“Jon was really clumsy sometimes!” Martin said defensively, before a fond smile crossed his face. “Tim said he probably got distracted and walked into the hearth instead of through the door and then was too proud to admit it.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, that sounds like Jon,” Melanie said, looking amused. “Anyway, he basically passed out when it happened, so of course I booked it, figured I was never getting back in. But instead of sending Tim to drag me back to Elias, Jon came limping down to where I was staying in the village a week later, asking if he could study my, quote, ‘abomination of a battle magic technique.’ You should have seen his face when I told him it was a curse, and one that Elias apparently couldn’t cure. He was so damn excited, did that creepy staring thing they do without even asking consent to—perv on my soul, or whatever.”</p>
<p>She shook her head.</p>
<p>“I didn’t actually know what he was doing at the time, but it creeped me the hell out, which pissed me off enough that I had another surge. I guess he saw it coming, though, because he just blocked it and kept staring.”</p>
<p>“Hang on,” Basira interrupted. “He blocked it? I thought the Panopticon wizards didn’t study combat magic.”</p>
<p>“They mostly don’t,” Melanie confirmed. “Jon and Georgie apparently figured it out together when they were kids just throwing magic around.”</p>
<p>Basira winced, feeling a touch impressed despite herself. Most self-taught witches she’d met had avoided blowing themselves up in childhood through pure luck, and to not only survive but to have actively developed new tools to practice safely was pretty impressive, especially since Basira had never heard of someone blocking pure magic like Daisy’s flares before.</p>
<p>“So eventually, after I slapped him and got him to apologize for being a creep, he agreed to try and cure me. For a while I thought it was just so he could study me, but when I had surges in front of him, he’d always ask if I was alright before he got into the real questions, and after a while I realized that he actually meant it, you know?”</p>
<p>“What does this have to do with Elias, or the tower?” Daisy asked. Melanie shook her head, seeming to refocus.</p>
<p>“Right,” she said. “So, a couple weeks after Jon agreed to help me, he came into town with someone else. I guess Elias sent him and Sasha to buy books or something. But… look, I used to study monsters, sort of—I illustrated a few bestiaries, and I had to go out and see the things. And I met this thing once, it looked like a woman but it just—felt wrong, somehow. It acted weird, and later I found out it could pull its skin off—”</p>
<p>“Hang on,” Martin said, distressed, “You’re saying Sasha was replaced by some sort of—skin snatcher, are you serious—”</p>
<p>“No, obviously not,” Melanie cut him off. “Jon actually had heard of that thing when I tried to explain it. But—the thing that replaced Sasha, it felt like that, somehow, and all of her mannerisms were different than the first time we met. And no one who <em>knew </em>her seemed to notice. Even Jon never believed me that she’d been… replaced, or possessed, or whatever, but I guess someone had been going through his things—he actually thought it was you for a while, apparently he managed to notice that you were always finding excuses to come see him but was too dense and too paranoid to figure out why—so he ended up moving a bunch of his notes here, where nobody could read them.”</p>
<p>“Except you and Georgie,” Daisy pointed out while Martin stammered and blushed. “He trusted you?”</p>
<p>“Well, sort of,” Melanie shrugged. “He’d apparently started writing them all in some sort of code the eye wizards use that you need a specific spell to read, so we have them, but they haven’t been very useful.”</p>
<p>“So what changed his mind?” Basira asked.</p>
<p>“I think he found Magnus’ castle,” Melanie said. “He was looking for it, used my maps of where I’d been. I offered to go with him, but he just looked at me like he expected me to stab him in his sleep. Which, y’know, fair. He might have been paranoid as hell, but I wasn’t exactly stable at that point either.”</p>
<p>Martin snorts. “Were you ever?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I know,” Melanie said, rolling her eyes. “But the point is… when he came back he was freaking out, but he told me I’d been right, that something had replaced Sasha.”</p>
<p>“Something?” Basira asked.</p>
<p>“He called it a ‘not-them’,” Melanie said hesitantly. “Apparently it’s some kind of parasite that eats your magic and takes over your body?”</p>
<p>“That’s impossible,” Basira said. “Your magic is— it’s what you are, it keeps you alive—if something ate it, you’d just die.”</p>
<p>“That’s what I thought,” Melanie said, “but Jon was so sure… like, he’d had some crazy theories about Martin and Tim before, but this was different. He wasn’t ranting or unreasonable, he just said he had to go back and warn all of you.”</p>
<p>“But it doesn’t make any sense!” Martin objected. “Sasha and I are friends. Sasha and Tim are… they’re Sasha and Tim! If she’d been, been replaced, we’d have noticed something!”</p>
<p>“She is… kind of odd,” Basira pointed out.</p>
<p>“I <em>know </em>her,” Martin insisted. “It’s Sasha. You’re all practically strangers, none of you knew her like we do.”</p>
<p>Melanie pursed her lips. “Jon actually said something about that. Why I noticed something and he didn’t, I mean. Apparently the Panopticon wizards, they can like, see when people really know each other?”</p>
<p>“Sasha mentioned that,” Daisy said slowly. “Or… not Sasha.”</p>
<p>“It’s when you trust someone,” Martin said quietly.</p>
<p>“Right, that’s what Jon said,” Melanie agreed. “So I guess the not-them it takes advantage of those somehow? Replaces them, I think. And because you’re linked to the thing…”</p>
<p>“You trust it,” Basira finished it. “Does it work like that?”</p>
<p>Martin shrugs. “I’m not actually a wizard, I’ve just heard Sasha talk about it.” He pauses, then adds, “Years ago, before Melanie ever met her. Even if Sasha… isn’t Sasha anymore, she definitely was back then.”</p>
<p>“Right,” Daisy replied. “But then, if you never really trusted the original person, not even a little…”</p>
<p>“Then it doesn’t affect you,” Melanie confirmed. “Of course, most people would see a half-stranger or someone they don’t know acting weird and just assume… well, that they didn’t know them that well. I guess I’m just naturally suspicious.”</p>
<p>“Okay,” Basira said slowly, trying to piece things together. “So, Sims is getting more and more paranoid for some reason—maybe this thing is interfering with him somehow, since it runs on trust—and then he finds out that Sasha’s been replaced, so he goes to Bouchard, and then gets eaten by a dragon before he can explain?”</p>
<p>Martin made a noise of disagreement, and they all turned to look at him. “Jon was with Elias for hours before the dragon showed up. There’s no way he would have waited that long if he thought people were in danger.”</p>
<p>“So, either this thing got to Elias somehow—”</p>
<p>“Which doesn’t make sense,” Basira objected, “because how would it still be walking around as Sasha?”</p>
<p>“Maybe it… had a baby or something,” Daisy suggested, and Basira shuddered. Monster nests were a nightmare, and the idea that they might have slept the night in the nest of a body snatcher…</p>
<p>“Well, that’s one… disturbing possibility,” Melanie said, looking nauseous, “but Georgie and I think it’s more likely that Elias knew about the thing.”</p>
<p>“That’s—that’s crazy,” Martin objected. “This whole thing is crazy, and—and Elias might be a bit strange sometimes, but he wouldn’t—”</p>
<p>“He knows everything that happens around here,” Melanie argued. “Especially inside the Panopticon. If even half of the things I’ve read about the Watcher’s Crown are true, there’s no way he could just miss a people-stealing monster in his tower.”</p>
<p>“Jon trusted him,” Martin pointed out.</p>
<p>“Jon was an idiot sometimes!” Melanie shouted, before going quiet. “And… as soon as he tried to tell Elias about this, he died.”</p>
<p>“What, you think Elias somehow summoned a dragon to carry Jon off when his evil body-snatching plan got found out?” Martin scoffed.</p>
<p>“I—no,” Melanie admitted, looking frustrated. “I don’t get that part at all, but… what else makes sense?”</p>
<p>“Look, you said yourself, Jon was… not doing great, at the end of things,” Martin said. From the expression on his face, Basira thought the admission might physically pain him. “And then he apparently went off into the woods, alone, to just… stew in his thoughts, and you’d already put the idea in his head. I—I don’t want to believe he’d lost touch that far, either, but… it’s better than Sasha being some kind of monster.”</p>
<p>Melanie stared at him for a long moment, then shook her head. “I can’t make you see the truth if you’re determined not to,” she said finally. “But… Jon did find <em>something</em> in the mountains. Because when he stayed here, he’d… nearly figured out a cure, and I think maybe it had something to do with the not-them.”</p>
<p>“What?” Basira asked, leaning forward. ‘Nearly’ a cure wasn’t ideal, but it was far better than any other option.</p>
<p>“You still have flares, though,” Daisy pointed out.</p>
<p>“Actually… she doesn’t seem…” Martin paused, looking thoughtful. “I feel like you’re definitely calmer than when you first arrived here.”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Melanie replied. “Like I said, when Jon came back from the mountain, he was frantic. He kept saying that you were all in danger, that he had to get back before it was too late. He wanted to go straight on to the tower, but when we got him to stop for a second he just sort of… collapsed.”</p>
<p>“Was he injured?” Basira asked. If the dragon had woken while Sims was still in its lair… but how would he have gotten away?</p>
<p>“No, it just looked like he’d been awake for a really long time,” Melanie replied. “And when he admitted he probably could afford to take a little break before heading down to the castle, he ate like he’d been starving, even though I know he brought enough food with him for the time he was gone.”</p>
<p>“He always forgot to eat when he was focused on something,” Martin said fondly. Sadly.</p>
<p>“Yeah, he was an idiot like that,” Melanie replied, but her tone was almost the same. “Even after he woke up, he wouldn’t sit still. I told him Georgie was making some food and he just looked at me and told me he wanted to try something.”</p>
<p>She took a sip of her tea, seeming to grapple for words. “I don’t know what the hell he did, but it felt… It didn’t hurt—well, he was holding my hand really tightly, but—it felt invasive, like he’d somehow climbed into my brain and started crawling around in my skull and peeling things apart. He stared into me, and I knew if I looked down, pulled myself away, I could make him get out. And gods, I wanted to, I was terrified-- but I wasn’t angry, like he’d been peeling that away too, somehow, and… I trusted him, I guess.”</p>
<p>“So—that was the cure?” Basira asked. Daisy was frowning, her eyes faraway as though she was thinking.</p>
<p>Melanie shook her head, and the hopeful bubble in Basira’s chest popped. “I thought he had— I felt so goddamn guilty, like he’d died to save me or some shit. But last week I had another attack.”</p>
<p>Damn. Still—three weeks between attacks was far better than the days that Daisy had been reduced to. Except… Sims was dead. Whatever he’d found, it had died with him. And besides…</p>
<p>“I don’t understand why you think this had something to do with the not-them,” Basira said.</p>
<p>Melanie blinked. “Right, well, Jon had been studying my surges for a while, and he thought he had a pretty good idea of what made the curse so hard to remove. He tried to explain it to me once, something about the magic of the curse resonating with mine so that it was actually tangled inside, the way one of those… trust-bonds would be.”</p>
<p>“So, what, you trusted the curse?” Martin asked disbelievingly.</p>
<p>“Well…” Melanie said slowly, “the thing is, when Jon and I were researching, we spent some time trying to trigger surges on purpose. He was… pretty good at that, actually. And we realized that they never did anything I didn’t kind of want to do myself.”</p>
<p>“It—Jon has a <em>permanent limp</em>!”</p>
<p>Melanie shrugged at Martin. “I mean, I’d never have hurt him like that on purpose if I’d been thinking straight,” she said. “But I sure as hell wanted to make him hurt, and I don’t think that was just the curse. This thing, whatever’s wrong with me, it didn’t make me angry,” she continues. “I’ve always been like this.”</p>
<p>Basira blinked at Daisy, whose eyes were now fixed unblinkingly on Melanie.</p>
<p>Daisy had always been the best. There had been rumors at court about the red knight, a romantic figure who travelled as she wanted and slew monsters along the way, spurning tournaments and insulting kings.</p>
<p>“I’ve always known I’ve had to fight to get what I wanted. And that was—well, it wasn’t fine, it made me furious, but I got used to it. I got good at it. I still am. And I don’t think that that’s a bad thing.”</p>
<p>“So… what changed?” Basira asked.</p>
<p>It had taken Basira almost a week to connect the snarling blond woman she’d met in a damp cave to the graceful noblewoman of rumor. Not that Daisy wasn’t graceful, exactly, but…</p>
<p>“I started to forget why,” Melanie replied. “I’d get angry, start fights over things that never would have mattered.”</p>
<p><em>That’s not right</em>, Basira thought. <em>Daisy only fights monsters. It always matters.</em></p>
<p>“Who I was fighting, why I was doing it, it stopped being as important as winning, as hurting them. And… it was easier to do that when I was focused, and when I had magic that seemed to help.”</p>
<p>Daisy always knew exactly what she was hunting.</p>
<p>But—at some point, they’d stopped taking breaks, just hunting down whatever rumor was in their path. Basira hadn’t minded—they’d helped a lot of people, the kind of people who’d never be able to request aid from a lord or offer a high enough bounty to hire a knight. But Daisy had seemed to lose track of things for a while, had stopped giving input on which direction they took beyond where the closest rumor led them. Hell, Basira had ended up using that to bring Daisy to Magnus.</p>
<p>“I was—getting worse when I met Jon. I just wanted a cure for the surges before I accidentally killed someone, but Elias refused to help, and besides, he pisses me off so much that I’d never have been able to sit in a room with him long enough to get cured without stabbing him.”</p>
<p>Basira heard Daisy snort softly in agreement. Melanie was almost growling, fingers clenched around the handle of her mug. The motion seemed to remind her of the mug’s existence, and she took a deep breath as she looked down before sipping at her tea.</p>
<p>“I’m pretty sure I would have hated him even before. I definitely would have hated Jon—”</p>
<p>Martin made a small, offended noise then, and Melanie turned to him, rolling her eyes.</p>
<p>“Martin, he was a condescending prick. Especially to you.”</p>
<p>“That’s not—” Martin breaks off. “Maybe Jon was a bit—prickly, but he was a good person,” he said stubbornly. “You’re not exactly a model of kindness yourself.”</p>
<p>“Well, obviously,” Melanie snorted. Then she sighed, looking down into her mug. “He was, though. A good person. We had a screaming fight practically every time we met, but he still helped me.”</p>
<p>Martin smiled softly, looking down into his own mug, and Basira looked away, uncomfortable. Daisy was perched on the bench next to her, one hand toying with the end of her braid as she frowned in Melanie’s direction.</p>
<p>“That feeling, like he was pulling you apart,” Daisy said suddenly. “You think that was him… eating your magic, somehow. That he learned to do it based on whatever he found about the not-them.”</p>
<p>Melanie hesitated, glancing at Martin again, then nodded. “It… I’d never felt like that when he’d tried that sort of thing before. And afterward, I felt… weak, as though I’d lost something. I recovered after a while, but… it all seems to line up, at least to me.”</p>
<p>It did, on some level, if you threw out every bit of common knowledge about how magic should work.</p>
<p>Basira wasn’t sure she was ready to do that based on the word of a woman who wasn’t even a wizard, but one glance at Daisy made it clear that for some reason, she was buying in. Daisy had good instincts, usually.</p>
<p>“Even—even if all this is true,” Martin said, looking up from his mug. “It doesn’t—what does it have to do with the dragon? Or are you just going to let it go so you can chase a cure that might not even be there?”</p>
<p>“I should think the monster <em>inside the Panopticon</em> would be a bigger concern than the one that’s never gotten in,” Melanie argued, and Martin opened his mouth to answer. Basira jumped in before it could devolve into another spat.</p>
<p>“Whatever Sims found or didn’t find, it seems pretty likely that he woke the dragon up,” Daisy said. “Figuring out where he went is still our best bet to find its lair, and to find information on this not-Them, if it really exists, which we’ll need if we end up having to get rid of that, too.”</p>
<p>“And you’ll look for more about the cure,” Melanie insisted.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Basira replied, though Daisy would not meet her eyes. “We will.”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>“What d’you think?”</p>
<p>Daisy frowned at the question, staring into the fire. She and Basira had taken Sims’ maps and left the little cottage at the base of the mountains a few hours ago, declining Melanie and Georgie’s invitation to stay for dinner.</p>
<p>“About what?” she asked. They had walked largely in silence; Daisy, at least, had been struggling to process everything Melanie had told them. Re-evaluating things.</p>
<p>“I mean, all of it,” Basira replied. “The curse, the… not-them, Bouchard…”</p>
<p>“I believe them,” Daisy said finally. “About Elias, about Sasha, about Sims’ cure. It fits together too well— even the way she described the treatment or whatever felt like when Sasha was examining me.”</p>
<p>And that was another horrible thought, that whatever creature was inhabiting Sasha James’ body, it might have pushed its way inside of Daisy as well.</p>
<p>“Could just be the way the Panopticon magic feels,” Basira suggested.</p>
<p>Daisy shook her head. “Melanie would know that, if she’d worked with Sims as much as she said, and it doesn’t make sense for her to have lied about it. Besides… I’ve been thinking. That watching feeling, it has to be from Bouchard and the tower, and I can feel it whether the bracelet is on or off. Hell, the way Bouchard stared at me in the observatory, it definitely didn’t seem like he was inconvenienced. But the bracelet is supposed to keep my magic in. What if the thing just wanted me to take it off so it could… feed on me?”</p>
<p>“I guess,” Basira replied. She stared into the fire for a while, running the oilcloth over her plate with a practiced hand. She hadn’t even worn it that day, but just as she did every other day, she took the time to clean the armor, because that was what it needed to stay useful. It was why Daisy had ditched the stuff in favor of magical enhancement long ago—well, that and the agility—but Basira saw it differently.</p>
<p><em>Anything useful takes time</em>, she’d told Daisy once. <em>I go over it every night, and then if I’m in battle the next day, I know I can count on it to defend me.</em></p>
<p>Daisy wondered sometimes if conversations like this worked the same way in Basira’s mind, making sure of where Daisy stood in their little universe so she knew how much she could count on her the next day.</p>
<p>“What about what she said about your curse,” Basira asked finally. “About… how it works. Why it’s so bad.”</p>
<p>Daisy hesitated.</p>
<p>“I’m not sure,” she said carefully. “Not all of it was the same.  It’s not so much about the hurting, for me, as it is about the chase, about the excitement of whether I catch the prey.”</p>
<p>“So it might not be the same, for you,” Basira replied, tone utterly reasonable.</p>
<p>This was—well, it wasn’t something Daisy <em>hated</em> about Basira, of course, because she didn’t hate anything about Basira and because she had no right to hate the thing that let her partner love her despite how much of a mess she was. But… Basira saw everything so clearly that sometimes it was almost easier for her to use little technicalities or black-and-white generalizations to rationalize away the things she didn’t want to deal with.</p>
<p>Daisy could talk her through it, she knew—she’d done it back when they’d first met, when Basira had gotten so used to tolerating the sexist jokes of the other knights and her dissatisfaction with the way things ran at court that she hadn’t even considered leaving, because she was a knight and knights were noble and those were things they did. But a selfish part of Daisy wanted desperately to let Basira keep this illusion about her for as long as she could get away with, and it hurt to instead have to be the one to break it.</p>
<p>“I think it is,” she said quietly. “Not exactly identical, maybe, but the same general issue. I’ve always loved the thrill of the chase, and when it felt like I was getting faster, or my sense-enhancing charms were more powerful and lasted longer, well, I was just getting better, right?”</p>
<p>“Experience does that,” Basira argued. “I’m better than when I left—”</p>
<p>“Basira, even if that’s all it was,” Daisy interrupted, “what she said about when flares happen, that’s true. On some level, I’ve known that for a long time.”</p>
<p>Basira was silent for a long moment. Finally, not looking up from her armor, she said, “What do you mean?”</p>
<p>“I used to be like you were,” Daisy explained. “You know, chasing bandits and rogue knights. It was just for the local lord, not the queen, but I was damn good at it, and I <em>loved </em>it.”</p>
<p>She stared into the fire, memories seeming to dance withing it.</p>
<p>“The first flare I had almost killed one of my suspects,” she told Basira. “Just a horse thief, he didn’t deserve to die, but I’d been chasing him for a week and I knew if I lost him I’d never find his trail again.”</p>
<p>“One time—”</p>
<p>“It kept happening,” Daisy insisted. “Sometimes it was really useful, breaking down doors and pushing me through things I’d never have managed otherwise, to keep the scent. Except then it started turning on the other knights. If I felt they were going to end a chase too early, before I got to get a good run… a saddle-strap would get burned through, or they’d trip so hard they broke something and had to stay behind.”</p>
<p>“Daisy…”</p>
<p>“That’s when I stopped working with other knights,” Daisy explained. “Partly because I knew I wasn’t safe to be around. But… they were holding me back and I knew it. I couldn’t go after people anymore—lords like their peacekeepers firmly under their control—but the monsters were even better.”</p>
<p>“Why’d you let me join you, if you thought other knights would hold you back?” Basira asked. Still so reasonable, still trying to find a way out. Daisy smiled mirthlessly.</p>
<p>“Honestly? At first I just thought you were like me,” she said. “You were developing a pretty impressive reputation, and when I met you, I could tell you were just as driven as I was.” She laughed. “By the time I figured out that you wanted to understand more than you wanted the challenge of it all, well, I’d also seen how much you cared about the people we were helping. I thought, God, didn’t that used to matter to me?”</p>
<p>Basira was looking at her now, really looking, a little dismayed. As she should have been.</p>
<p>“I could barely remember who I was outside of the hunt,” Daisy confessed. “Honestly, I still don’t think I know. But… I look at you, and I want to.”</p>
<p>At that Basira’s face goes soft again, and Daisy looked down, gritting her teeth.</p>
<p>“But, Basira, I just want you to know… if what Sims found is the only way of stopping it,” she said slowly, “if someone has to reach in and just… dissolve all of that? I don’t know how much of the person you know will even be left.”</p>
<p>“Daisy…” Basira’s voice was uncertain. “I don’t—”</p>
<p>Daisy looked up sharply as the wind shifted, something catching at her senses. A scent, maybe? The lingering odor of woodsmoke drowned out almost everything else, but Daisy could swear she’d caught a trace of something else, something <em>wrong</em>. Basira looked at her, confused, firelight glinting in her dark eyes, and Daisy put a finger to her lips.</p>
<p>Wind whispered through the trees, and the fire crackled quietly. Beyond their camp, it was so quiet that Daisy imagined she could hear the distant stream where it coursed down the mountainside to join the river.</p>
<p>She and Basira had been sitting there talking quietly for an hour or more, not shouting or clanking metal. There had been all manner of wildlife in these woods. It should <em>not </em>have been this quiet.</p>
<p>Basira met her eyes, a hint of alarm in her gaze, and nodded. They stood, Basira walking over to her sheathed sword.</p>
<p>“Better sharpen this before we get to bed,” she said conversationally, circling around the fire. She paused, scanning the forest casually from the new angle, and in the moment of quiet Daisy heard a twig snap somewhere in the trees behind her.</p>
<p>She spun and bounded into the wood, drawing her dagger as she went. Her magic welled up eagerly, pulsing in time with her blood like a second set of veins. Before her, someone stumbled backward, and Daisy growled, leaping forward. The figure flinched and started to fall, but Daisy seized him by the collar, rough wool catching at her nails, and slammed him against the nearest tree, pressing her dagger to his throat.</p>
<p>“Please don’t hurt me,” Martin begged.</p>
<p>Daisy snarled. “What the hell are you doing here?”</p>
<p>“I’m sorry, I just—I just wanted to help—”</p>
<p>“Oh, sure,” Daisy hissed, slamming him against the tree with her forearm. He gasped in pain, and a sick thrill shot through her at the stink of fear-sweat he gave off.</p>
<p>“Daisy, stop.”</p>
<p>Basira’s voice was flat and stern. With the firelight behind her, Daisy couldn’t quite make out her expression, but she could imagine it, patience and disapproval all mixed up together.</p>
<p>“He was following us,” she protested, but her grip on Martin’s collar loosened. He inhaled in relief, then faltered when the motion brought his neck closer to her blade.</p>
<p>“It’s not just him,” Basira said, and Daisy stilled.</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>“One man couldn’t quiet the whole forest like this,” Basira replied calmly. “Especially if he’s been following us the whole time.”</p>
<p>Daisy turned back to Martin, whose eyes were darting nervously at the dark forest.</p>
<p>“Brought some friends, have you?” she asked, pushing closer. “Well—”</p>
<p>Then something slammed into her like a charging bull, ripping her away from Martin. Daisy’s magic flared, burning through her bones and keeping them from snapping as she was thrown to the ground, back first.</p>
<p>She tried to leap to her feet, but four great scaled claws, each the size of her head, pinned her to the ground. Daisy snarled, jerking and squirming to twist free, and she was answered by a crackling roar that made her ears ring. Shaking her head, she tried to clear the strange white buzz that filled her mind.</p>
<p>“Daisy!”</p>
<p>She turned her head to find Basira raising her sword, fifteen feet away; the thing on top of her twisted its long, snakelike neck and then swept out a wing, firelight glinting strangely off what must have been scales and making it appear instead as though the wing was coated in a thousand staring eyes. Basira was knocked backward, and Daisy growled, bucking and kicking out. Her magic snapped and flared along with her helpless rage, trying to burst out of her skin, and she gasped as the solid wall of the daisy bracelet stopped it, reflecting the power back to race up her bones like fire.</p>
<p>The claws pinning her down loosened just slightly, though she could barely feel the difference through the pain wracking her body. And then the pressure returned, tighter than before and curling around her waist as though—</p>
<p>A shriek ripped itself from Daisy’s throat as she was yanked off the ground, kicking out at empty air. Her magic flared even worse in her panic and fury, and then the return stroke slammed into her like a wave, and everything went black.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“That,” Basira breathed, staring up at the dark sky, “was not a dragon.”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Martin gasped, “what?”</p><p>Basira couldn’t hear Daisy screaming anymore. There were a lot of things that could mean, and few of them were good, because even if Daisy wasn’t in pain anymore, she wouldn’t be quiet after being carried off by… something.</p><p>“I don’t know what the hell that thing was,” she told Martin, “but I’ve seen a dragon before, and that wasn’t one.”</p><p>Martin stared at her open-mouthed as she stalked past him toward her and Daisy’s campsite. After a moment, she heard him start to follow her, tripping and stumbling in the dark.</p><p>“It was big and lizardy, with wings and—what else could it be?”</p><p>“There are lots of big, winged lizards that aren’t dragons,” Basira replied, mind ticking away. She didn’t know her way around these woods, and from what he’d said, Martin didn’t either after this point. If they started wandering around by night, they were going to get lost. “Wyverns, cockatrices, amphithere…”</p><p>“Aren’t those all different types of dragons?” Martin asked.</p><p>“Not really,” Basira replied. Then again, ‘getting lost’ was a pretty vague idea, in this scenario, considering they barely even knew where they were going. “How long was Sims gone again?”</p><p>“Um… eleven days? Minus however long he spent at Georgie’s,” Martin reminded her, and then added, “so what is it?”</p><p>“I told you, I have no idea,” Basira answered.</p><p>Worst case, if Sims had spent no more than a half day wherever the thing lived—Magnus’ castle?— it would still take four more days to get up there. Maybe she could cut down that time using the map and the fact that she was a knight and not a notably clumsy wizard, but on the other hand Sims had apparently spent years around these woods, and might have had a better idea how to navigate them than she would.</p><p>Four days, then. Daisy was tough, Basira reminded herself, she could handle things for four days.</p><p>“You just gave a whole list of things—”</p><p>“None of them make sounds like that,” Basira snapped, and saw Martin shudder in response.</p><p>Basira had once fought a battle against a company that had hired mages of the Vast, who had made lightning strike over and over out of a clear sky. Halfway through, Basira had started to get a sense for when it was about to happen, from the way every hair on her arm had stood on end and from a faint sound, almost inaudible under the clamor of battle: a strange, buzzing hiss like nothing she’d heard before or since—until today, when the creature had roared, the sound like that unearthly noise multiplied a thousand-fold.</p><p>She swallowed, adding, “None of them have <em>eyes </em>like that.”</p><p>Just before the thing had taken Daisy, after Basira had heard her make the familiar cut-off gasp that meant the bracelet was containing a flare, the creature had cocked its strange, slim head, spreading its wings. A string of glowing green eyes had opened up along them, every one staring at Daisy with ravenous curiosity.</p><p>That curiosity was another reason Basira was certain the thing was no dragon. Dragons and wyverns were clever, of course, but they were still animals. The creature that she’d just encountered, whatever the hell it was, was ferociously intelligent.</p><p>And that, more than anything else, gave her hope. A dragon might carry off livestock or even people, but four days was far too long to expect it not to eat whatever it had caught. But that creature had seen something in Daisy that had caught its interest, and maybe that was something that would make it leave her alive until Basira could find her.</p><p><em>I </em>will <em>find her</em>, Basira promised herself.</p><p><em>Of course you will, </em>she imagined Daisy replying. <em>I’ve been through too damn much to get killed by a fake dragon.</em></p><p>“You’re… you’re still going to kill it, though, right?” Martin asked. Basira suppressed a jump; she’d nearly forgotten he was there.</p><p>“It took Daisy,” she replied, and met Martin’s eyes. After a moment, he nodded in comprehension.</p><p>“I’m coming with you.”</p><p>Basira frowns. “You—”</p><p>“It took Jon, too,” Martin said, and she blinked for a moment at the steel in his tone. A part of Basira wanted to argue that this was different, but of course he knew that.</p><p>“Alright,” she said finally, “but only because I have a feeling that I’d have to <em>make </em>you stay behind, and I don’t have the time or the energy.”</p><p>Martin looked at her, not quite smiling. “Sounds about right.”</p><p>***</p><p>Daisy woke suddenly, going tense, and then suppressed a pained groan as every muscle in her body screamed in protest.</p><p>She’d been laid out on the floor, a thin blanket shielding her from the cold stonework. One shaft of dim morning light slanted through a slit window, illuminating a flurry of dust motes and a thick mass of cobwebs in each corner. The room was silent except for Daisy’s shallow breathing.</p><p>Gritting her teeth, Daisy dragged herself into a sitting position, trying to piece together what the hell had happened. She remembered fighting the dragon, could have sworn that it had carried her off. But even it had made its nest in this abandoned castle, there was no way it would have laid her so carefully and then left her behind.</p><p>As she levered herself to stand on shaky legs, Daisy noticed that her right wrist was, once again, bare, and growled. She was getting really tired of being stolen from.</p><p>To make matters worse, the door to the room had been barred from the outside. Daisy considered climbing out the window, but one glance out put the idea to rest. The courtyard below was a good thirty feet down, and her captor had been a clever enough thief enough to remove the knives she might have used to make the climb.</p><p>She turned back to the door, a thick wooden affair that was peeling from age, traces of rust visible on its hinges. Daisy gingerly called up her magic, channeling it into her protesting muscles, and then took a running start, slamming into the door shoulder-first. It groaned, the bar on the other side shuddering with the impact, and Daisy grimly called up more magic as she crossed back to the other side of the room, heart pounding. At the second impact, the hinges squeaked sharply, and Daisy could feel a wolfish grin cross her face as she lined up again, shoulder throbbing in time with her pulse.</p><p>As she barreled forward, her magic flared and lashed out, and when she hit the door it exploded outward, thick splinters of wood spraying the stone hallway beyond.</p><p>It made a hell of a racket, but Daisy could hear no answering sounds of alarm, and when she sniffed the air, the smell of human was faint, distant. Peering out a window on the opposite side of the hallway, she saw nothing but green woods and blue sky. A slight breeze made the hair that had escaped her braid dance against her cheek, the air thin and cold enough to raise goosebumps on her skin.</p><p>Big stone castle, high up in the mountains? Maybe Sims had found Magnus’ old home after all.</p><p>Daisy followed the scent of human down the hallway, picking up speed as she went. Without the bracelet, she’d always felt better after a flare— stronger, more focused. Now, she wasn’t sure whether that qualified as better, or just more like what the curse wanted her to be.</p><p>Finally, she turned another corner and heard the faint scratching of ink on paper. The door wasn’t locked, and she burst through it with a growl.</p><p>“Shit,” said the man behind it, scrambling out of his chair. He was probably half a head shorter than Basira, and looked like he was half her weight, all big grey-green eyes, grey streaked hair and sharp, knobbly elbows. His dark green tunic was ripped at the shoulders, and when he raised his arms defensively, Daisy noticed ink splatters on the cuffs, and a familiar clear bracelet on his left wrist.</p><p>She was going to snap him in <em>half</em>.</p><p>“Oh god, please don’t kill me,” the man said, nearly tripping over the chair in his haste to back away. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”</p><p>“That’s mine,” Daisy snapped, prowling slowly forward. She could have caught him in a second, but with her between him and the door there was nowhere for him to escape, and a sick part of her wanted to watch the regret and terror break over his face for a moment longer.</p><p>“Wh—yes, sorry,” he said, eyes flicking to his wrist for a moment before jerking back to her in panic, like he was afraid she’d have crossed the room in the second he’d looked away. “And—I will give it back, eventually, if you’d just let me explain—”</p><p>His back hit the window ledge, and he broke off, eyes darting quickly around the room. Daisy could pinpoint the exact moment he decided which direction to bolt, and grinned.</p><p>He twitched, and she pounced. Across the room, up onto the desk with a crackle of papers, and then with one more leap he was pinned to the floor, staring up at her with eyes that showed white all the way around.</p><p>The man heaved for breath but wisely didn’t struggle, and that eager part of Daisy twisted with disappointment. Her magic curled and hissed, urging her to let him run or perhaps to lean in and rip out his throat. A heavy growl rattled from her chest, and she shook her head.</p><p>“You need to give it back,” she bit out. “Now.”</p><p>“I—” the man started, but Daisy was already reaching for his wrist. He actually tried to squirm away then, and Daisy shoved him back down.</p><p>“Please just wait—”</p><p>The cord slipped easily over his skinny wrist, and with a quick flick of her arm her magic was locked safely away.</p><p>The man went limp.</p><p>“I’m really sorry about this,” he said, quiet and sincere, all his fear drained away.</p><p>Through the red haze, Daisy thought, <em>why are his eyes so familiar—</em></p><p>And then he jerked, and with a horrible, static roar, Daisy was thrown backward, a heavy weight pinning her to the floor.</p><p><em>Oh</em>, she thought inanely. <em>That’s why.</em></p><p>A row of those unearthly green eyes opened along the dragon’s snout, seeming to stare into her soul. Something in her recognized a bigger predator, and she stilled, unable to close her eyes and avoid that terrible gaze. A long moment passed.</p><p>Then, some of the eyes turned away from her, more and more staring through the window at the sky until the dragon’s head finally turned to follow. Its weight lifted suddenly off her as it reared back and lunged for the little window. Daisy thought for a moment that it would smash its way through the surrounding wall, but instead with a strange shifting that her eyes couldn’t quite follow, it—impossibly—squeezed through, lunging into the open air.</p><p>Daisy climbed to her feet with difficulty, stumbling toward the window. Underneath it, exactly where she’d had him pinned down, lay the man’s body, eyes shut and grey-black hair scattered messily across the ground. She checked for a pulse and frowned, eventually realizing that though it was there, it was far slower than weaker than she’d ever felt. Sighing, she straightened and looked out the window. The distant shape of the dragon flowed through the sky like a ribbon caught in the wind, sweeping low over the mountainside to the west.</p><p>Hopefully Bouchard’s wards were still working.</p><p>***</p><p>By midmorning, Basira’s frustration was already starting to break through her composure. The day had started off—well, terribly, after the brutal split-second between sleep and wakefulness before she’d remembered why exactly it was that Daisy hadn’t kicked her awake the previous night. But they’d made good progress initially, Martin guiding them on a path that seemed much more direct than the route they’d followed the day before. Once they’d left the trails Martin was familiar with, though, navigating the forest had become… challenging. They’d tried to follow the direction the dragon had taken the previous night, but between the dense forest and the scattered ravines and drops, it was nearly impossible.</p><p>They’d been hiking for a few hours when they reached a clearing. Basira glanced over at Martin to check on him, vaguely surprised he’d been able to continue at this pace without tiring.</p><p>“Going up and down the tower stairs five times a day is finally paying off,” he joked when he caught her expression.</p><p>Basira sighed. Maybe having him trailing after her wouldn’t be as much of an inconvenience as she’d thought.</p><p>She was about to suggest they move on when she caught a glimpse of something glittering and large in the sky. Shading her eyes, she studied the shape as it drew nearer.</p><p>From this distance, it looked much like the dragons she’d seen before, all sleek curves of green scales that let it cut through the air like a fish in water. As it passed over them, it turned, circling once, twice over the clearing before dropping into a steep dive.</p><p>Basira swore, triggering the spell to summon her armor with a quick flick of the wrist and drawing her sword. But just as suddenly as it had dropped, the dragon pulled out of the dive, skimming over the top of the tallest trees before its huge wings began to beat, dragging it back up into the sky.</p><p>It circled again for a few moments before, with a roar that Basira couldn’t help but interpret as frustrated, it turned and flew back the way it had come.</p><p>“That was—that was weird, right?” Martin asked, staring after the dragon with his eyes shaded. He sounded uncertain, but less terrified than the average person would be about a dragon threatening them. Then again, she supposed, Martin had been dealing with the dragon attacking his home for months.</p><p>“That’s what it does at the tower,” he continued, looking more thoughtful. “Except it will keep circling for hours before it finally loses interest. It even dives like that—pulls back right before it hits Elias’ wards, apparently, like it can see them.”</p><p>He paused. “<em>Can </em>dragons see magic? I mean, I know it’s invisible, but if they’re drawn to it they have to be able to sense it somehow, right?”</p><p>“People think it’s more like a sense of smell,” Basira said slowly. “They know it’s there, but it’s not exact enough to dodge spells. Or wards.”</p><p>Martin nodded. “So, another point for the ‘not a real dragon’ theory,” he said. “But I was more wondering… why did it stop <em>now</em>?”</p><p>“Good question,” Basira said, studying the woods around them, but nothing about them seemed unusual enough to repel a dragon, and there was no sign of anything that might be warded.</p><p>“There’s another problem, though,” she said, unrolling the map with a sigh. “Wherever that dragon came from, it’s not the direction we’ve been heading, and I don’t think it’s the one on the map, either.”</p><p>“That’s… not good,” Martin replied, coming to study the map. Basira frowned at it for a long moment, checking the legend before growling with frustration.</p><p>“It doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “Sims <em>couldn’t </em>have followed the route he marked, not if he got back in just ten days.”</p><p>“At least Jon marked a route,” he pointed out. “Melanie’s are even worse.”</p><p>Melanie had apparently scrawled a date and an ‘x’ on the map whenever she’d gotten her bearings, maybe intending to connect them later—except the route the dates implied made no logical sense, sometimes placing her on one side of the huge forest in the morning and a week’s walk away on the other side the same afternoon.  Moreover, none of her wanderings ever got near the area that Jon had marked as Magnus’ castle, and the Archivist’s cottage wasn’t indicated.</p><p>“Looking at how much success <em>we’re </em>having,” Basira mused, “Melanie’s version might actually make more sense.”</p><p>Martin sighed but didn’t disagree. “So… what do we do?”</p><p>“Keep walking uphill,” Basira suggested. “Eventually we’ll find a landmark, or the sun will set and we’ll be able to navigate from the stars.”</p><p>She tried not to remember what Martin had said about people who’d spent months wandering in the forest without believing a full day had passed, and he didn’t remind her. Basira also didn’t mention that every woodland navigation tactic she knew, from lichen on the trees to the position of the shadows seemed to give her conflicting information. Instead, she simply followed the steepest slope wherever she could and hoped.</p><p>When they finally found a landmark, though, it was a waterfall that was way too far north for them to have reached that day.</p><p>“Shit,” Martin said, looking at the map once again.</p><p>Basira glared at it, at the clear green line Jon had marked and the scattered black ‘x’-es that she didn’t want to have to start adding to.</p><p>Then, decisively, she rolled up the map and put it back in her belt pouch, striding into the forest.</p><p>“Um, if we’re going to be wandering through the woods for a theoretically indefinite amount of time,” Martin asked, trying to lag behind but seemingly unwilling to let her out of his sight, “shouldn’t we stay close to a water source?”</p><p>“Probably,” Basira replied. “That would make sense.”</p><p>She continued into the brush for a few minutes more, Martin sputtering and clearly trying to come up with the right words to make her stop or at least explain herself. Basira walked on, following the easiest path rather than any particular direction.</p><p>“Basira,” Martin said finally, “I get that you’re frustrated—”</p><p>Basira stopped, then stepped quickly aside before he could crash into her back.</p><p>“Could you find your way back to the stream from here?” she asked as he turned to face her.</p><p>“I—I think—” Martin’s eyes flickered over the trees around them with growing dismay. “C-can you? Because I don’t know if I can.”</p><p>“Nope,” Basira replied, and drew her sword. Martin stumbled away with a yelp and she rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry, it’s not for you.”</p><p>“I don’t see anything else for you to use it on!” he argued, not seeming reassured.</p><p>“There’s clearly something in these woods, alright?” she asked. “Maybe a monster, maybe some kind of curse, I don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s changing the trails, bending them somehow, and it’s probably what kept the dragon out. But it took Sims exactly where he needed to go, which means it can consciously change its behavior somehow. And it’s going to do the same for us.”</p><p>“Or what?” Martin challenged. “You’ll chop down the whole forest? With a sword?”</p><p>“No,” Basira replied, though suddenly she wondered what would happen if someone were to set the forest on fire. Maybe something to try if this didn’t work.</p><p>“Come here,” she told Martin, and gingerly, he complied, stepping forward to face her. She sighed and moved to stand next to him.</p><p>“Hold onto my shoulder,” she told him, “and close your eyes.”</p><p>He started to protest, and Basira held up the hand not occupied with her sword.</p><p>“I’ve been dealing with monsters and magical bullshit for years, Martin,” she assured. “Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”</p><p>That was a blatant lie, but Martin took a deep breath and shut his eyes, and Basira turned so he could drop a hand on her shoulder.</p><p>“Don’t let go, or we’ll probably get separated,” she warned, voice cool and even. “Don’t worry, I’ll walk slowly.”</p><p>Surveying the woods one last time, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. The forest around them was quiet, the stream already too far away to be heard, and Basira wondered if whatever this was affected animals, if they’d even notice if it did.</p><p>Raising her sword, she stepped forward, dirt shifting slightly under her boots. Whatever the thing in the forest was, it seemed to work by messing with the senses, distorting time and space to its purposes. Moreover, it had actively helped Sims, who’d presumably had some magic to help him see clearly—that was the whole thing with Panopticon mages, right?</p><p>Basira didn’t have anything like that, no magic perfectly suited to scare her enemy into backing off. So she’d just make herself as unappealing a meal as possible.</p><p>It wasn’t bound to work, but if in the worst case scenario they ended up in some kind of… lair, Basira would be able to keep them alive. But they didn’t have time to just wander around the forest. <em>Daisy </em>didn’t have time.</p><p>“Basira?” Martin asked hesitantly. “Shouldn’t we have hit a tree or something by now?”</p><p>Basira stopped, opening her eyes. Then she smiled.</p><p>“You can look now,” she said. A moment later, Martin gasped, hand slipping off her shoulder.</p><p>“How the hell…”</p><p>Before them stood a wide clearing, a large wooden house occupying most of it. The white paint was beginning to peel and lichen crawled up the thick timbers, but on the door, Basira could still make out a familiar symbol—a stylized, staring eye emerging from an open book.</p><p>“That’s Magnus’ symbol,” Martin said uncertainly. “Well… it would be. Without the book.” He paused, eyes sweeping over the house again critically, before turning to Basira. “I thought it was supposed to be a castle? I mean, it’s a big house, but—”</p><p>“I think it’s the Archivist’s cottage, actually,” Basira replied.</p><p>“It’s not exactly a cottage, either,” Martin muttered as he followed her up to the house. When she reached the door, Basira sheathed her sword, reaching out to try the handle. It was locked.</p><p>“What was the sword for, anyway?” Martin asked. “I mean, if this thing controls entire forests, I don’t see what you thought you were going to do with a big sharp piece of metal.”</p><p>“It’s not a normal sword,” Basira said, surveying the door—nothing special, just pine with a single latch at the doorknob. “But mostly it made me feel better.”</p><p>Ignoring Martin’s incredulous sputtering, she reached up to knock on the door, knuckles rapping against the painted pupil of the eye.</p><p>After a few moments waiting in silence, Basira sighed.</p><p>“Stand back,” she told Martin, backing up a step. He obeyed, but his eyes widened as he saw Basira’s weight shift.</p><p>“Wait—”</p><p>It took a single sharp kick from Basira’s steel boot to break down the door. The wooden latch snapped inward with a crunch; at the same moment, Martin shoved her aside, and Basira felt a wave of hot air rush from the place she’d been standing.</p><p>She stumbled upright, looking at Martin in worry, but he was—well he looked too terrified to be <em>fine</em>, but he was unharmed. Around him, though, stretching from the door to the edge of the clearing, there was a broad column of seared earth.</p><p>“How…” Basira asked.</p><p>“Tim bullied Jon into teaching him that magical shield years ago,” Martin explained shakily. “He offered to teach me some defensive magic when… you know… dragon.”</p><p>“I thought Melanie said it took a lot of magic to do?”</p><p>Basira had asked them to teach her, but even if she’d had the power, the spell was apparently difficult to teach because it didn’t follow any of the normal conventions that wizards used when creating spells.</p><p>“I mean, it’s not like I ever use it for anything else,” Martin pointed out. “And it took me two months to learn, and this is only, like, the third time I’ve actually managed it…”</p><p>Meaning he’d thrown himself between her and a blast of pure magic without even knowing he could block it—and a good thing, too; that hadn’t been a gout of flame or something else her armor could protect her from, but an invisible spell she might not have been able to dodge even if she could have seen it coming.</p><p>Basira took a deep breath, internally berating herself. Good instincts? Experience? It was a wizard house, obviously the door would be protected. She was getting reckless.</p><p>“Should… should we go in?” Martin asked nervously. Basira had asked him to trust her, assured him she knew what she was doing, and even after watching her nearly get herself killed, he was still looking to her for the next step. She had to pull it together.</p><p>Leaning down, Basira tore the top off of a tall weed that had grown into what looked to have once been a neat herb garden and tossed it through the doorway, watching as it fluttered to land unharmed on the wooden floor.</p><p>“Probably safe,” she said. With a look of concentration, Martin stepped through the doorway, and after a moment, Basira followed.</p><p>The first few rooms they looked through were fairly standard; the bottom floor consisted of a large hall with a massive fireplace and chimney, with a kitchen, pantry, and buttery on one side and a small parlor on the other. Past the kitchen, the stairs led to an upper floor containing two bedrooms. One held a single bed and was largely undecorated, the walls bare and the curtains and dusty sheets made of a sensible off-white linen; the other held two smaller beds tucked against opposite walls, both stripped bare. A box underneath one held a variety of strange objects that Basira imagined must have held sentimental value for its owner.</p><p>It was the other half of the upper story, accessible from a stairway on the other side of the parlor, that held the real treasure. The first room was packed with closely-spaced bookshelves filled with leather-bound books that seemed to grow newer as Basira and Martin progressed through it, each marked with that same eye-and-book sigil.</p><p>Pulling down the one that seemed newest, Basira opened to the first page and skimmed its contents: some type of magical theory penned in a neat, professional hand.</p><p>
  <em>When binding magic to objects, it is important to consider the compatibility of the container with the intent of the magic. Some of these compatibilities are obvious: magic intended for viewing purposes is best suited to containers consisting of clear materials such as crystal or glass, while that of the Spiral are compatible with mirrors, fractals, and other objects that inherently distort the senses. Other associations are less intuitive, and my next endeavor will be to develop a comprehensive rating of the appropriateness of various materials for containing each branch of magic…</em>
</p><p>The next room was a laboratory.</p><p>Or… that’s what Basira assumed she was looking at, though there were no mysterious glittering instruments, no acrid smell of potions residue. Instead, she could see bottles of ink and paper, what appeared to be a set of woodcarving tools, and a large clear space delimited by a strange line of clear stone, embedded into the floor. Inside the circle, the floor was scratched and scorched, some areas appearing to have been cut out and replaced.</p><p>Basira walked carefully to the edge of the circle, bending to examine the cloudy white stone. A prickle of familiarity prompted to hold up her hand, forming a small ball of light over one finger. It was a simple exercise often used to evaluate magical ability in children; Basira had never managed to grow hers much larger than a fingers’ breadth, though she’d had far better control than many of the more powerful children. But when she carefully tried to send the light into the circle, it stubbornly refused to cross that arc of bone-white stone.</p><p><em>It </em>is <em>like Daisy’s bracelet</em>, Basira realized. She’d never heard of a mineral that blocked magic before meeting the strange wizard who had practically begged them to buy the thing; surely it would be in huge demand if it was commonly known?</p><p>“Basira,” Martin called. He was at a table, peering down at the first page of a notebook resembling the one they’d looked at before. “I think… this seems like something you’d want to know.”</p><p>She frowned and walked over, studying the notebook over his shoulder.</p><p>
  <em>Although the results of the compatibility study were promising in terms of short-term containment, the long-term experiments indicated that eventually, any trapped magic will be rejected by the native magic of the imprisoning substrate, however weak and dispersed it may be. Additionally, over time, the repulsion of the disparate magic causes stress to the container, eventually either warping it to fully serve the trapped magic’s purpose, or breaking it and allowing the magic to seep directly in the surrounding area. A more permanent solution must be found, though of course the outright destruction of magic remains impossible.</em>
</p><p>“Stress to the container,” Martin pointed out. “If what Melanie said was right, their curses somehow got inside them—maybe their magic is still partially repelling it, and that’s what causes the flares.”</p><p>Basira frowned. “It makes sense, but I’m not really an expert.”</p><p>“Well, it sounds like the closest person we have to an expert is Elias, who might be some kind of murderer?” Martin said. “So…”</p><p>“This might be the best we have.”</p><p>“I guess we should go back to the other room, try and get some context?” Martin suggested, moving toward the door, and Basira started to follow, then frowned.</p><p>“Wait!” she called, just before Martin touched the doorknob. He started, stepping away from the door and raising his hands, clearly remembering the trap on the front of the house.</p><p>“What is it?” he asked. “We just came through that door, didn’t we?”</p><p>“Did we?” Basira  asked. “I didn’t notice there being two doors, before.”</p><p>“Two—” Martin frowned, and then his eyes flicked to the other door. Slowly, he backed away.</p><p>“You don’t remember it either, then,” Basira said. The doors looked quite similar, likely once painted white but yellowed with age, though one seemed worse than the other, as though somehow it had gone through decades more wear than the door just next to it.</p><p>“This… it must be the same thing as in the forest, right?” Martin asked. “So if we just…”</p><p>He gestured to his eyes.</p><p>“No,” Basira said, spine prickling. “It didn’t bring us where we were going, it brought us where it wanted us. I’m not sure what exactly it does want, and I don’t think I’m interested in finding out.”</p><p>She looked around again, trying to decide what to do—and then there came a creak, and the yellower door swung open.</p><p>“You,” a strange, echoing voice said, “are no fun at all.”</p><p>***</p><p>By the time the dragon finally returned, Daisy was thoroughly bored.</p><p>She’d looked through some of the books in the library only to find them full of the same gibberish as Sims’ notes had been and promptly gave up, setting out to explore the rest of the castle. Apart from the library and the one she’d broken out of, most of the rooms looked as though they’d been empty for centuries, though the unconscious man had clearly at least poked his nose into most of them.</p><p>After perhaps an hour of poking around, Daisy had found the stair leading to the outer wall and felt her heart sink as she’d walked the perimeter. There was no discernible path leading up to the gates, and the forest had grown so close to the castle that she’d had to duck tree branches as she’d walked the wall. The trail of the human-scent had stopped abruptly after one of them, and after a moment Daisy had nearly begun to laugh at the idea of the weedy little man unconscious on the library floor climbing a fifty-foot tree just to get into this drafty castle. Though him being tiny had probably helped—Daisy isn’t sure she’d trust some of those branches to hold <em>her </em>weight.</p><p>The fact remained, though, that with the forest so overgrown it would have taken incredible luck to find the castle from the outside—you could probably pass fifty feet from the walls without ever knowing the place was there. She couldn’t help but remember the huge unsearched area on the map Melanie had given them.</p><p>If nothing else, she could probably aim downhill to the east and keep walking until she got out, could wait for Basira at Georgie’s farm. But in the meantime, Basira would be searching the forest for Daisy, and…</p><p><em>There are monsters in these woods, </em>the not-Sasha had said, and it would know, wouldn’t it? Daisy would bet on Basira in any <em>normal </em>monster encounter, but she was hardly prepared for dragons that possessed people, or whatever was actually going on here.</p><p>Soon enough, Daisy found herself back in this room, examining the one thing she’d been avoiding. It really had to be Sims, she admitted finally. Even if Daisy couldn’t for the life of her figure out what was going on with him, it seemed far too outlandish to have found some other tiny bookworm wandering around the mountains.</p><p>This, then, was the man who had, if not a cure, then at least a treatment for the curse that had dogged her steps for the last decade of her life. He didn’t look like much, splayed out on the floor like that—she’d thought him small and weak when she’d cornered him before, but without the nervous energy animating him he seemed even tinier. Studying his face, Daisy realized that the grey had to be premature—he was younger than Basira, maybe even younger than Martin.</p><p>His heart still beat impossibly slowly, his deep, gradual breathing spanning whole minutes for each inhale—a stasis spell, Daisy realized. Theoretically, she should have been able to wake him with a sharp shock, but loud noises and even a slap seemed to accomplish anything.</p><p>It was late afternoon when Daisy glanced out the window and spotted a quickly-growing blemish on the horizon. She retreated to the front of the room, ready to duck through the door as the dragon-thing approached alarmingly quickly, her heart pounding in her throat. From what she’d seen, the thing was impossibly strong and fast for a thing of its apparent size—although even that wasn’t necessarily a limit, she remembered, staring at that narrow window it had squeezed through. The claws and the weight of it had felt real enough against her, but shapeshifters could be a challenge to pin down.</p><p>The magic throbbed beneath her skin as the rushing sound of air on wings filled the air, the creature’s bulk blotting out the sunlight. With that same shuddering, slipping motion it slipped through the window, and Daisy readied herself to pounce, but it glanced at her only momentarily before seeming to be sucked down into the man below.</p><p>Daisy stilled as he sucked in a desperate breath and started to hack, curling in on himself as though to hold in the sound.</p><p>“Can—please, the bracelet,” he gasped, head turning wildly around the room. Daisy hesitated for half a moment more, watching as another spasm wracked his body, and then she darted forward, yanking the daisy bracelet off her arm by the charm and cramming it onto Sims.</p><p>For a long moment, the jerking didn’t stop; if anything, it seemed to get more intense, whimpers of pain escaping from Sims’ clenched jaw. Slowly, though, the wracking spasms grew further apart, fading into the occasional twitch.</p><p>Daisy sat back on her heels as Sims shakily pulled himself into a sitting position, back still slumped heavily on the wall. When he surveyed her, his expression was filled with exhausted resignation, but a hint of curiosity sparked as he met her eyes, not disappearing despite another pained flinch.</p><p>“Surprised you’re still here,” he commented, and then his mouth quirked wryly. “I’m almost surprised that <em>I’m </em>still here.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t kill a guy in stasis,” Daisy said flatly, and he breathed a dry laugh.</p><p>“Not enough of a challenge, I suppose,” he agreed, which, what? “Well, if you expect me to start running, I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you, so you might as well rip my throat out now and be done with it.”</p><p>Daisy blinked. “Do you <em>want </em>me to kill you?”</p><p>“N-no, of course not,” the man replied, eyes widening. “I suppose I just assumed—isn’t that what you’re here for? Why else would Elias send some kind of… hunt-creature after me?”</p><p>“I’m a <em>knight</em>,” Daisy growled. “And I don’t particularly care what Bouchard wants.”</p><p>Sims blinked at her, head tilting in confusion, and then—</p><p>
  
</p><p>He only had two eyes. Daisy could <em>see </em>them, glowing an unearthly green that she couldn’t rip her gaze away from, and yet she couldn’t shake the certainty that there were dozens of watchful eyes staring at her, not surrounding her but all gazing out of the same two sockets and into her soul.</p><p>Then Sims closes his eyes with a hiss of pain, and the feeling was gone.</p><p>“What the hell was that?” she snarled, and his eyes opened, though he avoided her gaze.</p><p>“I-I’m sorry, I… it’s never been that easy to Look into someone before,” he stuttered.</p><p>“Control yourself better,” she warned, fists clenching, “or I might decide to rip out your throat after all.”</p><p>He… snorted.</p><p>“A minute ago, you were completely convinced I would do it,” Daisy said, baffled. “How did looking into my actual soul give you a different idea?”</p><p>“Oh, no, I believe you,” he replied, a wry chuckle in his tone. “It’s more that… you’re encouraging me to avoid losing control by threatening to do so yourself.”</p><p>Daisy stretched her hand open before her nails could start to draw blood.</p><p>“Yeah, well, it was more fair warning than a threat,” she grumbled.</p><p>“I’m sure,” Jon replied, which was funny, because he might have been sure, but Daisy wasn’t. “Regardless, I take it Elias didn’t send you?”</p><p>“No,” she answered, then paused. “Well, technically he did hire us to kill the dragon, but I’m thinking I’ll re-evaluate that one after you tell me what the hell is actually going on.”</p><p>“Right,” he said faintly. He was remarkably afraid of her for someone who turned into a dragon when provoked.</p><p>“Did you really think I was some kind of monster?” she asked.</p><p>“I… well,” Jon stuttered uncomfortably. “Understand that my first impression of you is… blurred, and your curse is very advanced.”</p><p><em>Great</em>, Daisy thought.</p><p>“By first impression… do you remember things, when you’re like that?”</p><p>“Not clearly,” Jon said slowly. “Or… it’s an entirely alien set of senses and perceptions. On some level I do remember all of it, but it’s so different that it’s difficult to interpret.”</p><p>“So… you’re still you?” she wondered.</p><p>“To an extent,” Jon replied. “It—I think differently, too, and on top of that there are… the circumstances, of how this happened.”</p><p>Daisy tilted her head. “You’re like me, right? And Melanie? You’re what… what will happen to us, if we don’t die or get cured?”</p><p>“What?” Jon asked, apparently blindsided, and Daisy, too, blinked in surprise. “No, why on earth…”</p><p>“Melanie,” she explained. “From the way she talked, you took her curse weirdly personally, and all your friends say you got strange and obsessive near the end. Also… my curse, it’s a lot like Melanie’s, but it’s less straight violence and more… hunt, you said? That sounds right. So I thought, if there’s those, maybe there was one for seeing or knowing things too. Since your whole magic is about that.”</p><p>Jon gaped at her, and she shrugged. “Made sense to me, but I’m hardly an expert—”</p><p>“No,” Jon interrupted, looking almost excited. “I mean, you aren’t entirely correct, you and Melanie won’t end up like this without outside interference, but… it’s a very sound theory, actually, enough to make me wonder about my behavior prior to confronting Elias… what would the surges have looked like for beholding magic? Surely Elias would have seen—but maybe it was part of his plan…”</p><p>“Outside interference?” Daisy asked, interrupting his muttering, which had steadily decreased in volume and increased in speed. Sure enough, he started as though he’d forgotten she was there.</p><p>“Right,” he said. “I should… explain.”</p><p>“That would be nice, yeah,” Daisy replied, watching as he took a deep breath and seemed to order his thoughts.</p><p>“You said you spoke to Melanie?” he asked, and she nodded. “Then I’m sure she informed you that I traveled here to find some way of removing the foreign magic entangled with her own. I was actually hoping to find the Archivist’s cottage, as Magnus wasn’t well known for anything but passive study of magic, but I knew finding either location was an accomplishment unlikely to be replicated. So I began searching this library for anything that seemed even remotely useful.”</p><p>He looked around. “As you likely noticed, Magnus’ library was fairly extensive, and though I began with the sections devoted to curse-breaking, I quickly realized that all of his later, more advanced work in that area had been transferred to the Panopticon library. I was… at a loss, and I stumbled upon a set of laboratory notebooks written by Magnus himself—well, by him and his assistants, judging by the varied handwriting. In these notebooks, he documented his study of what he termed ‘magic creatures’.”</p><p>“Like… monsters?” Daisy wondered, but Jon shook his head.</p><p>“Not the type of monsters I imagine you’re used to,” he explained. “Things like kelpies and dragons and so on might interact with magic in ways humans can’t, but they’re still animals, made of flesh and blood. But Jonah Magnus, while examining the ruins of Leitner’s collection, apparently found several creatures composed entirely of magic that Leitner or his predecessors had managed to trap.”</p><p>“How do you trap something that’s made of magic?” Daisy asked, morbidly curious. Pure magic was invisible and impossible to destroy—a monster like that would be a nightmare to hunt. Or a challenge.</p><p>“To begin, with something like this,” Jon replied, holding up his arm to reveal her bracelet. “Magnus mentions a mineral of some kind that was especially useful for containing magic. Later in life I believe he found an especially large deposit of the same crystal, although much clearer than this piece—”</p><p>“The Watcher’s Crown,” she realized, and then— “Wait, is there something trapped in that?”</p><p>“I’m getting there,” Jon replied primly. “I hadn’t made the connection between the notes and the Crown yet on my first visit here, as Magnus took all his samples of the mineral with him in the move. I was more concerned about one of the creatures he described, which he described as the Not-them.”</p><p>“Melanie told us about that,” Daisy remembered. “It… possesses people?”</p><p>“Kind of,” Jon confirmed. “According to Magnus’… alarmingly detailed notes, it was bound to a table with certain carvings, but was able to enter the bodies of others, mimicking their behavior and assuming their trust-bonds and eating their magic. Magnus didn’t describe the spellwork on the table in detail, but I recognized the basic physical description of a table kept in the Panopticon’s artefact storage room, which Sasha had been studying.”</p><p>“So that’s why you were so sure it took your friend.”</p><p>Jon nods. “Combined with Melanie’s accusations… there was also the fact that Magnus ignored the spellwork because he was apparently focused on the creature itself; his notes imply that he allowed the not-them to consume several of his assistants and guests so that he could study its process for eating magic. His notes were… detailed, enough that I could imitate it and use them to cure Melanie.”</p><p>Daisy blinked. “You know she’s not fully cured, right?”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Whatever you did, apparently it helped a lot,” Daisy explained, “Martin said she was much more stable. But she’s had at least one attack since then.”</p><p>“Damn,” Jon hissed. “I thought at least… and if it didn’t work, then…”</p><p>He looked sick, and a bit guilty. Part of Daisy wanted to reassure him even though she knew she was shit at that sort of thing.</p><p>“It still helped,” she said brusquely. “And none of this explains what happened to you.”</p><p>“No,” Jon said, mouth twisting wryly, “it doesn’t.”</p><p>He took a deep breath, turning the bracelet on his wrist absently. There was a slight tremor in his hands, as though he was still in pain, or perhaps just remembering it vividly. Daisy wondered if that was what she looked like after a nasty attack, whether that was what had made Basira so determined to get her a cure.</p><p>When Jon spoke again, his eyes were fixed on the opposite wall, and his tone was blank and factual.</p><p>“Once I had finished the notebook, I didn’t stay to investigate the rest, though I was tempted. I believed I had a method to cure Melanie’s curse, and moreover I was under the impression that I needed to either recover Sasha from the not-Them, or at least protect Elias from it, because it seemed to me that the not-them had been spending a great deal of time with him.”</p><p>“Wouldn’t that be normal? Since she’s his student.”</p><p>“Perhaps,” Jon allowed, but his tone was skeptical. “My associates weren’t unjust if they described me as paranoid in the last few months before the incident, although whether or not I was actually cursed, I do believe there were… mitigating factors.”</p><p>He shook his head. “In any case, I returned to the Panopticon as quickly as I could. I demanded to speak to Elias on the outer observation deck, as I was convinced the not-Sasha would attempt to eavesdrop on our conversation. I told him what I’d found, showing him the notebook I had taken, and although I didn’t inform him of the details of my experiment with Melanie as she has threatened bodily harm if I were to consult with him on her curse, I did explain that I was confident I could replicate the method of consuming magic, and that if the not-Them could not be persuaded to let Sasha go peacefully, I would be able to remove it by force.”</p><p>He hesitated. “If… I was probably wrong, considering that I didn’t actually remove Sasha’s curse, but I would certainly have crippled it.”</p><p>Daisy frowned at him, trying to piece together the timeline. “Bouchard told us you didn’t tell him anything before the dragon took you. It seems pretty clear that he’s a lying bastard, but I don’t really understand what actually happened. I doubt that his evil plan was to turn you into some kind of dragon-thing.”</p><p>“Yes, that’s what I was about to explain,” Jon replied shortly. Then he sighed.  “Or what I was avoiding explaining, I suppose.”</p><p>The opposite wall must really have been fascinating, the way Jon was studying it now.</p><p>“Elias listened to everything I said, and then he thanked me for trusting him.” Jon laughed, quiet and dry and bitter as oversteeped tea. “I told him <em>of course</em>, that I’d always trusted him. Elias, he… he taught me a great deal, you understand, and more than that—everyone else I grew up with, even the ones who tolerated or liked me, they always saw the way I pursued knowledge as unhealthy at best, unforgivably selfish at worst.”</p><p>He shook his head. “In many ways they were right, but… Elias always seemed to appreciate that drive, to feed it, even <em>understand </em>it. I always—”</p><p>Shaking his head, he cut himself off. “But you don’t want to hear any of that. After that, he took me by the shoulders and told me to look at him. He told me he was proud of me, and I was looking in his eyes, and he looked so sincere... I believed him when he said he was sorry, too, and that he ‘hadn’t expected to do this so early’.”</p><p>Jon’s hands were clenched into fists as he glared down at the table.</p><p>“He looked me in the eyes and then he somehow ripped me out of my body,” he said, clinical and even. “For whatever reason, he didn’t consume my magic on the spot, though he must know how. Instead, he stored me in the Watcher’s Crown along with the substantial collection of Beholding magic Magnus had left there, and a strong anchor of his own.”</p><p>Anger seeped back into his voice, mounting as he continued. “I was confused, but even in that state I knew that Elias had betrayed me, and that I was trapped with a piece of him. I hated it, and I wanted to get out, and I wanted my body back, and I wanted to <em>understand. </em>Of course, I wasn’t strong enough to break the damn thing. But the other magic—the Beholding magic—it wanted some of the same things I did: to get out, to know—so it… embraced me, or I embraced it. Or maybe both.”</p><p>Jon shuddered, and though his tone meant the motion had to be pain, something about it looked almost… ecstatic. “It hurt, somehow, even though I didn’t have a body it was the most painful experience I’d ever had, even more than being ripped from that body in the first place. And it wasn’t enough. I’m not sure anything would be, whether magic even <em>could </em>escape from inside.”</p><p>He paused, a savage grin growing on his face, and Daisy’s magic buzzed in recognition.</p><p>“It was worth it, though, because when Elias tried to draw on the Beholding magic, he got me too,” he remembered, dark satisfaction in his voice. “It must not have been the plan, because he was surprised when he saw me—he was afraid. I couldn’t have been in there as long as I’d thought, because he was still outside, standing over my body. I was still just a formless mass of magic, but I saw him holding what was mine, what he’d stolen, and I got so angry—I guess that’s where the shape came from.”</p><p>Daisy hummed in reply. Dragons weren’t quite the lovers of treasure that people saw them as, but they were fiercely possessive of their nests. Maybe that was what the magic version of Jon saw his body as: home, the place where he belonged.</p><p>“So you just grabbed your body and flew away?” Daisy asked.</p><p>“Well, from what I remember, I’m pretty sure I tried to kill him,” Jon replied, and it sounded as though he was laughing at himself. “But Georgie and I, we’d developed this shield when we were kids—Elias was fascinated with it, it was part of how I convinced him to take me as a student, he’s always looking for new magic. It only blocks magic, but that’s all I was, so… I’d grabbed my body away from him first, and the blowback from the shield knocked me right off the tower. At that point, I just had the strongest instinct to hide my body somewhere safe… and I woke up here.”</p><p>“In your body?” she asked. “How does that work?”</p><p>Jon shrugged. “Even in that state, I guess I know I belong in a body, so when I’m not distracted by something else, I always return. But whatever Elias did, it severed the actual link between my magic and my body completely, and for some reason there’s more of <em>him </em>inside it now. I suppose I should be grateful, as it’s what kept my body alive, but…”</p><p>He grimaced, staring down at his hands, and Daisy wondered what, exactly, he was seeing.</p><p>“No, that’s disgusting,” she agreed, and he nodded.</p><p>“I remember how to consume magic, so I’d been attempting to chip away at whatever it is he left,” he explained. “But every time I get too distracted from wanting to be in my body—or too frustrated with its limitations—I’m summarily ejected again. It’s a vicious cycle, and it made my progress slow until you arrived. Besides, I need to find a way to re-bind myself before I remove him completely, because if I ever lose the bracelet, or it breaks or stops working, I’ll be ejected fairly quickly. And if there’s no magic left, my body will just… die.”</p><p>“Well,” Daisy said, “you might not have to deal with that for a while, since it sounded like you don’t know how to… unhook, I guess… foreign magic after all.”</p><p>“No,” Jon replied unhappily. “I suppose not.”</p><p>It was a thorny problem. Daisy tried to imagine living in that cycle for months, as Jon must have, and shuddered. At this point, he sounded more tired than scared, and she couldn’t help but notice the implication that despite knowing it could mean his death, he was still working to remove Elias’ magic.</p><p>“So you kept attacking the tower because you were trying to kill Bouchard?” she wondered finally.</p><p>“Partially, yes,” Jon replied slowly. “But… I’m also just drawn to the Panopticon, like a hound on a leash. Specifically, to the observatory.”</p><p>Daisy frowned, making the connection. “You mean…”</p><p>“Yes,” Jon replied. His mouth twitched up at the corners, but his piercing green eyes were bleak. “I’m out physically, but I’m still trapped. The monster bound to the Watcher’s Crown is me.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Art for this chapter is by beanestbean!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Oh, you <em>are </em>clever.”</p>
<p>Basira stared at the creature from inside the circle, where she’d dragged Martin as soon as the second door creaked open. The thing was tall, apparently taller than the door it had come through, though she was sure it hadn’t had to crouch to enter the room. It looked like a man, with long, curling blonde hair and a wide, sharp toothed smile, and its eyes were…</p>
<p>Basira tore her gaze away with an effort as Martin spoke.</p>
<p>“What the—who are you?” he demanded.</p>
<p>“I am not a who, Martin, I am a what,” it replied, tone amused.</p>
<p>“<em>What </em>are you, then,” Basira asked. At the same moment, Martin blurted, “How do you know my name?”</p>
<p>“Oh, a story,” it replied dismissively. “You can call me Michael.”</p>
<p>Grinning at them, it crossed its arms and leaned against the doorframe, clearly waiting for another question.</p>
<p><em>Alright then</em>, Basira thought. <em>It’s playing with us; let’s learn the rules.</em></p>
<p>“Why did you bring us here? What do you want?”</p>
<p>“You… interest me,” Michael replied. “I suppose I want to help, or maybe just to see what you’ll do.”</p>
<p>It tilted its head, curls falling over its shoulder as its neck seemed to grow with the motion instead of stretching.</p>
<p>“And, of course, there’s revenge,” it said, still sounding amused.</p>
<p>“Hang on—revenge?” Martin sputtered. “We don’t even know you! What could we have done that you’d want revenge for?”</p>
<p>“Oh, not you,” Michael dismissed with an airy wave of its hand, and Basira blinked as its too-numerous fingers seemed to ripple like grass in a breeze. “No, my revenge is for James, and for the Archivist, though that part has been adequately taken care of, I think.”</p>
<p>“James?” Basira asked. She can’t recall meeting or even hearing about a James since coming to Magnus.</p>
<p>“James Wright, he called himself,” Michael explained. “Though I suppose that must have been long ago. Before I was Michael, and before he was Elias.”</p>
<p>“He—you have a grudge against Elias’ old master?” Martin asked. “What did he do, refuse to cure your curse?”</p>
<p>Michael laughed, loud and echoing and wrong, covering its sharp-toothed mouth with a sharper hand. Basira shook her head, trying to dislodge the ringing of that laugh.</p>
<p>“You’re almost right, and yet so very wrong,” it told Martin finally. “I was not cursed; I <em>was </em>a curse. Before I was Michael, James found me trapped, and he buried my prison in these woods to hide his secrets with my twisting.”</p>
<p>“If you hated him,” Martin wondered, “why didn’t you just… not do that?”</p>
<p>“I did not hate him then,” the creature replied, patronizing. “I was not a me, before I was Michael. I did not hate, I simply… twisted.”</p>
<p>Basira tried to process that. “So… I’m speaking to a curse,” she said finally, disbelief leeching into her tone. “And I’m guessing whoever Michael was before, you… ate him? Possessed him?”</p>
<p>“I <em>became </em>Michael,” it corrected. “Or, perhaps, Michael became me? The words are… difficult, knight.”</p>
<p>Basira blinked; the creature sounded almost apologetic, as though it would be clearer if it could.</p>
<p>“How exactly did that happen?” she asked, and the expression cleared into a smirk.</p>
<p>“Why don’t you read about it?” Michael asked, pointing a long finger at them—at Martin, who was still holding the Archivist’s journal.</p>
<p>“Gertrude kept very detailed notes, after all,” it said, sounding almost bitter. “Michael watched her, and thought it only a touch strange, because normally she dictated her notes to him—Michael had beautiful handwriting.”</p>
<p>Martin started to flip through the book. Basira listened to the quick rustle of the pages turning, watching Michael’s strange eyes and trying to shake the impression that it looked intent. Finally, Martin sucked in a breath.</p>
<p>“The handwriting changes,” he confirmed. “Midway through. I hadn’t realized…”</p>
<p>“Read it out,” Basira ordered, keeping her eyes trained on Michael. It stared back, leaning against its impossible door, and her eyes shifted over its form, unwilling to settle on any shifting feature.</p>
<p>“It’s—more about compatible magic in containers, I think,” Martin prefaced. “Um—<em>It seems conclusive that only living creatures, particularly wizards, are capable of containing magic without significant leakage. I have made progress in adapting the process for a living subject.”</em></p>
<p>Cold fingers began to wrap themselves around Basira’s insides.</p>
<p>Martin paused, then added, “The next few pages are… formulae? I think? And some diagrams, though I’m not sure what they’re meant to be <em>of</em>…”</p>
<p>“Read the next entry,” Michael ordered, all the mirth gone from its voice. Martin hesitated, then continued.</p>
<p>“<em>The entity I have termed the Distortion, which inhabits these woods, seems inclined to enter almost any mind that wanders east of the stream. Its nature prevents me from tracking its magic to its source of the magic while retaining any semblance of coherence, but once the— the test subject enters its range of influence, my array should automatically trap and bind the creature to the subject...”</em></p>
<p>Martin trails off in horror.</p>
<p>“And you just… let her do this?” Basira asked.</p>
<p>“Michael trusted Gertrude implicitly,” the creature said, eyes shifting and mouth unsmiling. “When she told him to go into the woods and, once he had lost his way, cast a spell that she said would let him find his way out again, Michael believed her; he believed everything she told him. And in a way, she was telling the truth. Michael did find a way, and the way was me. She simply didn’t tell him how much it would hurt.”</p>
<p>“That’s <em>horrible</em>,” Martin said, and then: “I’m so sorry.”</p>
<p>Basira blinked. So did the monster.</p>
<p>Martin looked between them, blushing ruddily. “I mean… I know you’re not exactly Michael anymore, but it sounds like you remember being him? And whatever you were before, it sounds like you’re a person <em>now</em>, and you remember something horrible happening to you, so…”</p>
<p>“Martin, it’s literally a monster wearing the skin of a human it killed,” Basira pointed out. “It said so.”</p>
<p>“That is not what I said,” Michael disagreed. “I am not one of the skin stealers. But… I am not a person, Martin.”</p>
<p>Martin tilted his head. “I think I’ll… agree to disagree on that one.”</p>
<p>“You are very strange,” the monster replied, and when had its crossed arms started to look more defensive than casual? Basira repressed the urge to snort.</p>
<p>“Anyway,” she said, shaking her head, “I’m more concerned about Bouchard. You said James Wright <em>became </em>him—does that mean he’s the same kind of thing that you are?”</p>
<p>“He is not,” Michael replied. It sounded offended. Well, fair, Basira hadn’t exactly been happy that the sleazy bastard was the ‘same kind of thing’ as her.</p>
<p>“Then what is he? How did he become Elias?” Martin wondered.</p>
<p>Michael responded with an eye-twisting shrug. “James Wright never took an interest in Michael, but he visited the cottage often. The Elias Bouchard who is now is not the one who was Elias when Michael was himself.”</p>
<p>“So… Elias was Gertrude’s apprentice,” Basira said slowly, trying to untangle that disaster of a sentence. “You’re saying Wright took an interest in him, and then…”</p>
<p>Martin frowned. “Is he a… not-them? The thing that took Sasha?”</p>
<p>“No,” Michael shook his head. “The Stranger conceals. Elias Bouchard is not a mask; he is simply not Elias Bouchard.”</p>
<p>“And you know that for sure because…”</p>
<p>“I am lies and distortion embodied, knight. I can recognize myself in others.”</p>
<p>Fair enough, except…</p>
<p>“If your whole purpose is to lie, how do we know we can trust you?” she asked.</p>
<p>Michael laughed again. Basira wished it would stop doing that, and not just because it was patronizing as all hell.</p>
<p>“You don’t,” it told her, “and you shouldn’t. But if you want to prevent Elias Bouchard from becoming Jonathan Sims, you will have to.”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Daisy studied Jon from the doorway. He was sitting cross-legged on the chair at the desk, murmuring quietly to himself as he took notes on the book open to his left and occasionally flipping another open to reference something.</p>
<p>After their conversation the previous night, she’d gone hunting—partially because she was hungry, partly in the hope of finding her way through the woods and back to Basira. When she’d returned hours later, she’d found that Jon hadn’t budged from the spot. As she’d stepped through the door, he’d glanced up quickly, staring eyes freezing her in place. Then he’d blinked, nodded in acknowledgement, and gone back to his work.</p>
<p>Daisy had eaten, slept, and woken up again to find him still working. Only the different books surrounding him indicated that he’d moved from the desk at all.</p>
<p>Her staring didn’t seem to bother him; she supposed that growing up around here, he must be long used to the feeling of being watched. She’d felt that strange prickle on her spine several times the previous night before it faded away, as though Elias had been periodically checking on her.</p>
<p>“How are you still alive?” she asked.</p>
<p>Jon looked up, blinking—not surprised by her presence, but apparently taking a moment to pull himself back to reality.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry, what?” he asked, not putting down his quill.</p>
<p>“When was the last time you ate?”</p>
<p>He blinked again, tilting his head.</p>
<p>“Well—I suppose it was at Georgie’s, when I was going back to the Panopticon,” he replied, still looking uncertain. “Or, no—Martin made me eat when I got in.”</p>
<p>“So, two months ago,” Daisy said, leaning against the stone doorframe. “I’m guessing that’s the last time you slept, too?”</p>
<p>“I mean, unless you count being comatose and a dragon?” he joked, and Daisy snorted before she could stop herself.</p>
<p>“But seriously, how are you not dead?”</p>
<p>“Well, as far as I can tell, Elias had cast a rather powerful stasis spell on my body, powered by the magic he’d implanted. Which does raise some rather alarming questions about what he was planning to <em>do </em>with my body, but—”</p>
<p>“I mean, that’s good to know,” Daisy interrupted, amused, “but I more meant, how has your utter lack of self-preservation not killed you <em>years </em>ago?”</p>
<p>“I—I’m not that bad,” Jon sputtered, offended. “Really—”</p>
<p>“Watch the candle!”</p>
<p>Jon looked down, causing his hair to drift even closer to the candle he still hadn’t put out despite the morning light filtering through the window. With a yelp, he jerked away and nearly knocked over the candle. After a moment of fluttering hands, he pinched out first his smoldering hair, then the candle itself, before examining the singed ends of his hair with a grimace.</p>
<p>“Oh, sit still,” Daisy said impatiently, pushing away from the wall. Jon tensed when she drew her dagger, turning to watch her as she rounded the desk and moved behind his chair. She sighed.</p>
<p>“Turn around,” she ordered. “I’m just cutting the burnt bits off.”</p>
<p>He’d singed perhaps an inch off his hair, which hung down to the middle of his back. Daisy sliced through it quickly, Jon flinching at the slight tug.</p>
<p>“Have you at least found anything?” she asked, putting her knife away, and he relaxed slightly.</p>
<p>“Plenty,” Jon complained, turning to face her, “but little of practical use.”</p>
<p>Impatiently, he brushed his hair out of his eyes, and Daisy frowned, tracking the motion. Hands curled restlessly at her side, she sighed.</p>
<p>“May I?” she asked, gesturing to his hair.</p>
<p>Jon blinked. “I—I don’t think you missed any,” he stuttered uncertainly.</p>
<p>“I meant to braid it,” she replied, pulling her hand back to her chest. “You can say no, I just... it relaxes me. Distracts me.”</p>
<p>“Oh.” Jon surveyed her, eyes going sharp for just a moment, and Daisy looked away as soon as she could, trying not to wonder what he’d seen.</p>
<p>“A-alright then,” he said, and she looked up sharply. He was still turned around in his chair, and when he met her eye there was a touch of fear, but also—not pity, but compassion. Daisy swallowed.</p>
<p>“Turn around, then,” she said brusquely.</p>
<p>“R-right,” he replied, turning slowly with a long exhale, back still rigid with tension. When Daisy’s fingers met his scalp, he went even tenser, suppressing another flinch.</p>
<p>“What exactly are you looking for?” she asked.</p>
<p>“Well, my major problem right now is that I can’t remain in my body without this,” he replied.</p>
<p>“Is that really a priority?” she said, starting to untangle the ends of his hair. “I mean, I want it back eventually, but it works, and you definitely need it more than I do.”</p>
<p>Jon sighed quietly, leaning back minutely. “I’m grateful, but I really do need something else. For one thing, as long as I have it on, I can’t do magic.”</p>
<p>Daisy’s hands went still. “You can still do that looking thing, though. And read the spelled books.”</p>
<p>“Yes, well, perhaps I should have said I cannot perform any <em>external </em>magic,” he corrected himself. “Those spells affect my own perception, and the bracelet only keeps magic from exiting my body.”</p>
<p>His tone was pedantic, almost lecturing, as though he was having some academic discussion with another wizard. Daisy felt frozen, fingers still caught in a particularly stubborn tangle.</p>
<p>“So you can’t cast that magic shield,” she said finally.</p>
<p>“I can’t,” Jon confirmed, not turning to look at her. “I also can’t… well, apparently I couldn’t cure you regardless, but I can’t treat you either, unfortunately.”</p>
<p>He sounded genuinely apologetic, as though he was concerned for her and not about what could happen to him if she had a flare.</p>
<p>“I’ve also been experiencing something similar to Melanie’s surges when Elias’ magic tries to reject mine,” he continued casually. “It isn’t ideal, obviously, and it must be possible to bind magic to a body since Elias did it. But I haven’t been able to uncover a method, not here.”</p>
<p>He’d been working with Melanie for months before his disappearance; his first encounter with her had apparently permanently damaged his leg. He’d felt the flares himself and probably knew how easy it could be to trigger one. He knew exactly how dangerous Daisy was. And he was letting her braid his hair.</p>
<p>Slowly, she forced her stiff fingers to move again, gently pulling the knot apart.</p>
<p>“What made you think it would be here?” she asked.</p>
<p>“Well, I can’t exactly go anywhere else,” he pointed out dryly. “But beyond that, Magnus studied magical entities bound to objects—the not-them is clearly bound and not simply imprisoned, since it can take victims like Sasha or yourself.”</p>
<p>“What?” Daisy asked, tensing. “I’m—I’m still—”</p>
<p>“Yes, sorry,” Jon sputtered, voice strained, and Daisy realized that her fingers were clenched in his hair and forced herself to relax. “It hasn’t taken you over in any significant way, of course, but it has left some magic in you, which Magnus indicated was part of the process of it choosing its next victim.”</p>
<p>“What, like marking its territory?” she demanded, and Jon snorted.</p>
<p>“More like placing a bookmark,” he said. More seriously, he explained, “The reminder is for it, not others—I wouldn’t have been able to tell it apart from your own magic before…”</p>
<p>He gestured vaguely, apparently indicating the entire situation.</p>
<p>“How did Magnus see it, then?” she asked, combing out the last of the tangles.</p>
<p>“He didn’t, actually,” Jon told her. “That information came from a direct interview with the monster.”</p>
<p>Daisy raised an eyebrow, separating his hair into sections so she could start braiding.</p>
<p>“It just… gave up all its secrets? I suppose he was feeding it people, were they… friends?”</p>
<p>“The transcript suggests it rather hated him, actually,” Jon replied. “No, he used a truth spell. A really clever piece of work, actually—that one he did note down, in an earlier book.”</p>
<p>Which meant, Daisy realized as she wove the strands of hair together, that he’d seen the reference and gone looking for it. A spell like that could be useful, of course, but the appreciation in his voice made her a touch uneasy, especially as she remembered the way a tiny fragment of curiosity had prompted him to stare into her soul without the slightest bit of warning.</p>
<p>Was that the magic he’d ‘embraced’? Or just that insatiable curiosity he’d admitted that only Elias had appreciated?</p>
<p>“He must have moved the books on bindings,” she said aloud. “Somewhere secret, in the Panopticon. He brought the table, didn’t he? And the legends say Magnus was planning to bind himself to the Crown, right? So he took all the related research with him.”</p>
<p>“Legends,” Jon dismissed, but then he sighed morosely. Daisy held the finished braid, with one hand and reached into her belt pouch for one of her leather ties.</p>
<p>“Guess we’re breaking into the Panopticon, then?” she asked.</p>
<p>Jon made a frustrated noise, leaning back in the chair as soon as she let the braid go. She stepped forward, sitting on the desk and ignoring his wince as she shoved a book aside to make space, leaving it hanging partly off the desk.</p>
<p>“Melanie did it,” she pointed out. “More than once, it sounds like.”</p>
<p>“Elias almost certainly knew about that,” Jon said, and Daisy blinked. “Whatever link he has with the Watcher’s Crown, it allows him to see practically everything east of the river, except for some sections of the woods—there’s a curse of some kind that distorts the whole area, apparently.”</p>
<p>Daisy frowned—that watched feeling wasn’t just psychological, then.</p>
<p>“How?” she asked. “If you’re here, and you have all the magic he kept in there…”</p>
<p>Jon shrugged. “I’ve got a bit of him, too—he’s still linked to it.”</p>
<p>“So he can see us now?” Daisy asked, feeling her skin crawl with discomfort. Did she feel watched now because she was thinking about it, or because Bouchard was actually watching?</p>
<p>“I mean, he can still only pay attention to one thing at a time,” Jon said.</p>
<p>“There’s no way we aren’t the thing he’s the most interested in right now,” Daisy argued. “He ripped you out of your body to keep you from telling anyone whatever you might have found here, and then you stole a bunch of his magic and started telling me all his secrets.”</p>
<p>Jon nodded, his mouth tight. “Honestly, I’m not sure what we can—”</p>
<p>There was a loud, wooden creak, and Jon cut off sharply as Daisy’s head whipped around. On the opposite wall, a yellow, wooden door stood open, and in the doorway lurked something that was pretending to be a person—but it smelled all wrong, and there was something… off, about its hands, its height, the way its shoulders fit together.</p>
<p>“What are you?” Jon demanded.</p>
<p>It laughed. “How would a melody describe itself, when asked?”</p>
<p>Daisy huffed with irritation, slipping off the desk.</p>
<p>“You’re the curse from the forest,” Jon said, standing and rounding the desk slowly, his gait uneven. He sounded almost… delighted. Daisy paused and studied the way he was staring at the creature, as though he couldn’t look away. “The Distortion.”</p>
<p>The creature’s smile widened, and Daisy stepped forward, ready to pull Jon out of the way and lunge for it if she had to. “Doesn’t the thing in the forest eat people?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” it replied, grinning. “I particularly enjoy the obsessed—researchers, cartographers, knights searching for their lost loves…”</p>
<p>Daisy was ahead of Jon and across the room before she could think, pinning the thing to a wall. “You took Basira?”</p>
<p>“She walked in herself,” it said. Its throat moved with the words, but not with the low vibration of sound—it seemed to shift, sharp edges underneath the skin turning as if to cut her hands. Daisy pulled away, her hands tingling.</p>
<p>“She and her friend… Martin, I believe. So gullible, that one.”</p>
<p>“…Martin?” Jon said from somewhere behind her, distracted. Daisy’s eyes narrowed.</p>
<p>“Give them back.”</p>
<p>The thing laughed, and she winced at the horrible noise, stumbling back.</p>
<p>“No?”</p>
<p>Daisy growled, leaping for the creature—and then yelped, bouncing off the smooth, cold surface of a mirror.</p>
<p>Beyond it, the creature kept laughing, the sound echoing as though coming from a far distance. The echoes seemed to ripple through the mirror, the image of the creature growing fuzzed until its honey-gold mane resolved into Daisy’s unraveling braids, the face twisting from a laugh to a snarl.</p>
<p>“What the fuck?” she said, looking around. They weren’t in the library anymore, though Daisy was nearly sure she hadn’t stepped through the doorway. In fact, there were no doors in sight, only a long hallway of pale marble stretching in either direction. For a dizzying moment, Daisy thought the hall might stretch on forever—and then she blinked, and realized that there was a turn, with another mirror at the end of it—or, no, it must have been a painting, she wasn’t in it.</p>
<p>Looking over her shoulder, she swore as she saw Jon walking down the hallway in the other direction, staring at the walls, and darted after him.</p>
<p>“Where the hell are you going?” she demanded, catching him by the shoulder. “What was that, and where are we?”</p>
<p>“It’s beautiful,” he replied, excitement plain on his face and eyes focusing somewhere beyond her shoulder. “It’s beautiful, but it doesn’t make sense—I  suppose you can’t see it, but the magic— the formulae would be incredible, if I could figure them out, there has to be— I could draw it for you, or write it down—"</p>
<p>He looked down at his hands, smiling when he found the forgotten quill in it. He was clearly stumped for a moment by the lack of paper, but then his eyes slid to the walls, and he turned and started scribbling directly onto the bare slats of wood.</p>
<p>Maybe it was just because Daisy knew very little about high-level magical theory, but the numbers and sigils that Jon was drawing on the wall looked like absolute nonsense. As she watched, the ink on the quill ran dry. Jon paused for only a moment, brow furrowing in a frown, before he leaned in to keep writing, etching faint scratches onto the dark stone.</p>
<p>The look in his eyes was piercing and cold—and familiar, she realized. This was what he had looked like when he was examining her, but this time it was, apparently, directed at the magic of whatever strange place they’d found themselves in.</p>
<p>“Jon,” she hissed. “Snap out of it.”</p>
<p>Jon waved a dismissive hand at her, frowned at what he’d written, and then slashed it out with a frustrated groan before crouching down to continue writing.</p>
<p>Daisy had half a mind to just throw him over her shoulder and let him ramble at her or whatever he planned to do. The creature had implied that it had taken Basira, maybe that she was somewhere in this strange place too—along with Martin, apparently.</p>
<p>The thought made her frown. Whatever was wrong with Jon, it had started when the creature had refused to tell him what it was—presumably he’d gone looking for his own answers and somehow gotten stuck? It had said it fed on obsession, and certainly Jon’s drive to understand certainly seemed to fit the bill. He’d hadn’t reacted to anything that had been said after that, too lost in his study of the creature and its environment.</p>
<p>Except when it had mentioned Martin.</p>
<p>Daisy had honestly pegged that as entirely one-sided, the way everyone had talked about it, but…</p>
<p>“Hey,” she tried again, seizing Jon by the collar of his tunic once again and dragging him around to face her. When he tried to look over her shoulder, she snapped her fingers in front of his nose. He barely blinked, but when she wouldn’t let him move away, he yanked irritably at her grasp, reaching up to try and pry away her hands, with little success.</p>
<p>With his hands up, though, he tilted his head.</p>
<p>“It’s blocking the magic,” he said, frowning, and then with his right hand he reached for the bracelet on his left arm.</p>
<p>“No,” Daisy snapped, seizing his bony wrists. He was irritating enough to wrangle as a ninety-pound human; if she had to try and control a magic dragon in a magic hallway, she’d scream. Unless doing that would snap him out of it? But… the dragon form was Jon, he’d said, and from what it sounded like, it was Jon with all of his hunger to know and none of the few regulating impulses he did have. Most likely he would be just as obsessed with this Distortion in that form, especially considering how fixated he had gotten on the Panopticon.</p>
<p>Except, Daisy realized, when he came and ‘rescued’ Martin from me.</p>
<p>Well, it was as likely to work as any other option.</p>
<p>“Jon, Martin needs you,” she said.</p>
<p>Jon frowned. “What?”</p>
<p>“Martin Blackwood,” Daisy repeated, and Jon blinked. “He’s stuck somewhere in these corridors and probably terrified. He’s with my partner Basira, and we need to find them.”</p>
<p>“Find them?” he asked slowly, and then nodded, eyes going focused again—but not on her, on the corridor behind her. “We should make a map. Where’s my quill?”</p>
<p>“No,” she growled. She’d had him for a moment, she knew she had, she just had to get him to focus—</p>
<p>Or did she? He was incredibly focused, now. What she needed was to distract him, to jolt him back to the now.</p>
<p>“He made you tea,” she remembered. “You said, the morning you went back to the Panopticon, it was the last time you ate. Are you hungry?”</p>
<p>“I- no,” Jon said, blinking again behind his spectacles.</p>
<p>“You were so determined to get back to the tower, you only stayed with Melanie and Georgie because you literally collapsed,” she said.</p>
<p>“I’m not that tired,” Jon protested. “I won’t collapse, I just need to—"</p>
<p>“But Martin made you tea, and… probably something with it, if you ate--”</p>
<p>“Just bread and butter,” he said, still distracted. But he was responding to her, and about something other than the hallways. Daisy kept talking, finding the part of it that had been bothering her.</p>
<p> “Elias was right there, but you still waited long enough to eat. Why?”</p>
<p>“Martin makes really good tea,” Jon snapped defensively.</p>
<p>Daisy blinked. Jon blinked back, meeting her eyes.</p>
<p>“Is that really what you’re going with?” she said incredulously. “The tea was good? You were afraid the not-Them was going to <em>eat</em> your mentor!”</p>
<p>“I’d been gone for a while,” Jon said stiffly. “Martin can be very forceful when he’s worried.”</p>
<p>Daisy sighed. “Whatever you want to tell yourself.”</p>
<p>“Yes, well,” he muttered, looking around and frowning at the scribbles on the wall. “That really doesn’t—”</p>
<p>“No,” Daisy barked, making him jump and stare back at her. “Just… ignore it. Close your eyes if you have to, but I don’t want to have to keep waking you up. We need to find Basira and Martin.”</p>
<p>“Or a way out,” Jon replied. “It could have been lying. That seems to be what it does.”</p>
<p>“Maybe,” Daisy conceded. “Where even are we? Did it open some kind of portal?”</p>
<p>“It—well, it ate us, I suppose,” Jon said. “I was Looking at it, and… the creature, the hallways, the curse in the woods, they’re all part of the same being. Everything we’re seeing is just… magic.”</p>
<p>“So it’s an illusion? Or a dream?”</p>
<p>That would explain the way everything seemed to be shifting, impossible to keep track of between one moment and the next even though she could never quite catch things changing.</p>
<p>“No, it’s real,” Jon said, shaking his head. “It’s one of those pure magic creatures I told you about, like the not-Them—except it has a physical form, I didn’t realize that was… possible…”</p>
<p>He trailed off, wide eyes meeting Daisy’s.</p>
<p>“You have a physical form,” she said slowly. “Even as a dragon, I mean. Is this thing… like you?”</p>
<p>“I mean, it can’t be exactly the same,” Jon reasoned. “It was far too… coherent to be without a living mind… and it didn’t seem human at all, either.”</p>
<p>Daisy opened her mouth, about to say that Jon—when he was using his powers—felt almost as inhuman. Then she took in the frown on his face, the way he was fiddling with her bracelet on his wrist.</p>
<p>“Let’s just look for Basira and Martin, then,” she said finally. “If this is part of the creature, I doubt we’ll get out unless it wants us to.”</p>
<p>Jon nodded, hands darting to straighten the hem of his tunic.</p>
<p>“Can you… track them by scent, or something?” he suggested. “Any sort of search spell I might cast would be blocked by this.”</p>
<p>He held up the hand with the bracelet, looking frustrated.</p>
<p>“That’s… not really how it works,” Daisy said slowly. “They wouldn’t have left a trail unless they’ve been here. I don’t even know if hallways made of magic would hold a scent.”</p>
<p>Jon frowned. “Try?”</p>
<p>Daisy narrowed her eyes, but if he couldn’t cast magic, she wasn’t sure what else they could do—wandering around the corridors at random seemed like a recipe for disaster.</p>
<p>Carefully stoking her magic—the normal human nose wasn’t anywhere near strong enough for tracking—she took a deep breath in.</p>
<p>And sneezed repeatedly, nose burning as though she’d stuck her snout in a bowl of dried peppercorns.</p>
<p>Quickly, she let the magic drop, and the smell disappeared, though she still had to sneeze a few more times to clear the feeling from her nose.</p>
<p>“Interesting,” Jon said slowly when the fit had passed. “Would you mind doing that again?”</p>
<p>Daisy squinted up at him through her watering eyes. “Why?”</p>
<p>Jon blinked. “I want to see if what caused it was magical in nature,” he said, as though it were obvious. “If whatever you smelled was that strong, surely we’d be able to catch at least a hint of it?”</p>
<p>“Is now really the time for academic curiosity?” she asked.</p>
<p>Jon frowned, nose wrinkling in irritation.</p>
<p>“You’re reacting to <em>something</em>,” he replied pointedly. “I’d like to know what it was.”</p>
<p>Daisy sighed, straightening. It hadn’t been a <em>pleasant </em>experience, but it hadn’t been especially painful either, and he was right—they needed to know as much about their environment as possible.</p>
<p>“Are you going to end up zoning out again?” she asked.</p>
<p>Shaking his head, Jon bounced slightly on his feet, realizing she was giving in. “I’ll be focusing on you, not the creature.”</p>
<p>“You’re going to enjoy this, aren’t you,” she said, sighing.</p>
<p>“I always enjoy the chance to learn something new,” Jon replied, and she snorted.</p>
<p>“Fine then,” she said. “Look at me.”</p>
<p>And then he was, his gaze seeming to grow heavy in that way that was growing familiar, like a thousand people scrutinizing every inch of her.</p>
<p>Daisy took one more deep breath, then called up her magic, channeling it into her nose. She had time to hear Jon suck in a surprised breath, and then the burning hit, and she sneezed again, a nasty fit that brought tears to her eyes and made her throat lock up. Hastily, she dismissed her magic. If he hadn’t seen whatever he was looking for, tough.</p>
<p>When she was done hacking and sneezing, she looked up.</p>
<p>Jon was still <em>looking </em>at her, she knew, the feeling of eyes on her back not having receded for a moment.</p>
<p>“Did you see it?” she demanded, and he nodded, unblinking.</p>
<p>“At first, it was your standard body-enhancer,” he said. “I’ve seen Tim’s, they’re similar—your magic just flows into your nose, modifies it internally somehow. I assume you can still cast it with the bracelet. But then… you had a surge.”</p>
<p>“What?” Daisy asked, swiping the reflexive tears away to examine him for injuries. “It didn’t— you’re not—”</p>
<p>“It didn’t lash out,” Jon said hastily. “It barely even looked like a surge, really, it was so controlled—but it was the foreign magic, rising out of your own. It formed a sort of… snout, over your face, like some kind of wolf-head mask.”</p>
<p>“What?” Daisy demanded.</p>
<p>“I think it was letting you <em>smell</em> magic, somehow,” Jon replied. “That’s why you’re reacting so badly here—there’s a lot of magic around, obviously.”</p>
<p>He sounded fascinated, of course, but Daisy was distracted. “Does that mean that’s been happening every time I used a sense-enhancer?”</p>
<p>Jon shrugged. “It’s certainly possible.”</p>
<p>“So I’ve… invented some kind of magic-smelling spell?” she asked, hoping it was as simple as that, but Jon’s expression dashed her hope.</p>
<p>“I don’t think it would work for anyone without your particular curse,” he said. “It must have to do with the way the shaped magic is rooted in your body, human magic doesn’t usually work like that—I wonder if this is how real dragons do it…”</p>
<p>“But it’s not going to help us find Basira,” she realized.</p>
<p>What else was there to try? They could just look around for a while—that hallway was certainly inviting them to walk; Daisy wondered if the creature was frustrated that they’d remained stationary for this long, discussing.</p>
<p>Basira would probably be up and moving by now, reasoning that any action was better than sitting there and waiting for the monster to arrive.</p>
<p>“It’s not,” Jon said slowly, “but I think I did see something that might. You and Basira are… close, correct?”</p>
<p>Daisy frowned. “I mean, yeah, we’re together. What’s your point?”</p>
<p>Jon cleared his throat. “You may not be aware, but when two individuals trust one another, their magic becomes—”</p>
<p>“Tangled, yeah,” Daisy replied. “So… you can see Basira’s magic in mine. So what?”</p>
<p>“So,” Jon said, “that piece of magic is still connected to hers.”</p>
<p>“And you can see the link,” Daisy realized, straightening. “Doesn’t it just pass right through walls?”</p>
<p>“Normally, it would,” Jon replied, smiling. “But these walls are made of magic, and of a type that is peculiarly opposed to mixing with trust.”</p>
<p>“Alright then,” Daisy said, “let’s go.”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>“I’m sorry,” Martin said quietly. He was studying the ground, curled in on himself further than the pack on his back would have justified. Basira sighed.</p>
<p>“I’m not going to say it wasn’t stupid,” she said slowly, because leaving the protective circle in the cottage had been downright idiotic, especially on the word of a creature that they knew was designed to fool people. “But we might have had to do it eventually; I doubt Michael would have any problem waiting us out.”</p>
<p>If nothing else, the last hours they’d spent wandering these strange, shifting hallways had shown that. Whatever the creature wanted from them, it apparently wasn’t time sensitive.</p>
<p>“It’s just…” Martin trailed off. “I want Jon to be okay so badly, even though he can’t be. I know he can’t be.”</p>
<p>Basira hummed sympathetically, trying not let her mind draw parallels to her own situation. There was every probability that Daisy <em>was</em> alive, even if it had been as long as it felt.</p>
<p>“I thought for a while that I felt it, when he died,” Martin said desolately. “He’d been up with Elias for hours by then, talking about god knows what, and then suddenly I felt this… tugging. It was so clear, I thought maybe someone had cast a spell on me—and then five minutes later Tim came in off the wall, shouting about dragons.”</p>
<p>Interesting. Basira had heard anecdotes about people having strange premonitions when their loved ones died; she wondered, suddenly, if it had something to do with those trust bond things. If a piece of your magic was tangled up in someone who died, did it dissipate with theirs? Or did it snap back in on you like a stretched cord?</p>
<p>“It keeps happening, though,” Martin continued. “Not every time I think of him, but—"</p>
<p>He snorted wetly.</p>
<p>Basira tilted her head.</p>
<p>“Sometimes things can get… tied together, in the memory,” she said slowly. “A sensation and an emotion. Maybe you felt like that for some unrelated reason that day—or even some kind of magic reason, maybe-- and the events are so linked in your mind that now, when you think of him dying…”</p>
<p>“M-maybe,” Martin replied, not meeting her eyes. “It just feels so… real.”</p>
<p>“The mind is funny that way.”</p>
<p>Basira whirled, Martin stumbling back a step away from Michael, who had definitely <em>not </em>been behind them a moment before.</p>
<p>“What the hell do you want?” Basira barked, drawing her sword. She’d spent perhaps the first hour with it drawn before realizing that Michael probably wasn’t planning to show up—or so she’d thought.</p>
<p>“I told you,” it drawled, “I want to help.”</p>
<p>“How is making us wander around for hours with no explanation helpful?” Martin demanded.</p>
<p>“Oh, it wasn’t,” Michael said cheerfully. “But I was hardly going go to all this effort without feeding on you at least a <em>little</em>.”</p>
<p>“So you’ve been, what, siphoning our magic or something?” Basira asked.</p>
<p>“Not exactly,” Michael said. “More… the magic your confusion shapes.”</p>
<p>“O-kay,” Martin replied slowly before visibly deciding to move on from the subject. “Does that mean you’ll do something actually helpful now?”</p>
<p>“Oh, I already have,” Michael said. “Several things, actually.”</p>
<p>It smirked like a cat dropping a bird at its master’s feet, and Basira opened her mouth to ask what, exactly, it had done.</p>
<p>“Martin?”</p>
<p>The voice was deep and rasping, with an accent even more clipped and proper than Bouchard’s. She turned and sucked in a breath.</p>
<p>“Jon!”</p>
<p>Basira caught Martin by the collar before he could rush toward the man standing with Daisy at the end of the hallway.</p>
<p>“It tricks people,” she reminded him, and he deflated.</p>
<p>“Prove you’re you,” she demanded.</p>
<p>Daisy frowned, and Basira waited, holding her breath. They’d developed a code for this, when they’d gone after an illusionist.</p>
<p>She knew it was Daisy even before she spoke by the embarrassment on her face when she remembered the exchange they’d agreed on.</p>
<p>“When we first met, I asked you to dance with me before I even knew your name.”</p>
<p>Basira smiled and let Martin go. He swept Jon into a hug before Jon could get a word out, sobbing into his neatly braided hair—tied with one of Daisy’s cords, Basira noticed.</p>
<p>“I told you you were crazy, but I danced with you anyway,” she said, and Daisy sighed, moving toward her.</p>
<p>Basira looked her over as quickly as she could. There were no visible bruises, but she was still walking a bit stiffly—she must have had at least one bad flare in the last few days. Except—her bracelet was missing.</p>
<p>“That is a lie,” Michael said from behind Basira, sounding fascinated, “but it is also not.”</p>
<p>“Fighting a wyvern in a half-flooded cave isn’t exactly like dancing,” Basira allowed, turning to keep it in view, “but it’s closer than you’d think.”</p>
<p>“Lots of fancy footwork,” Daisy agreed. Behind them, Martin and Jon were conversing in hushed tones, and Basira tried to avoid listening.</p>
<p>Instead, she turned to her partner, bringing up a hand to curl gently into her hair. Daisy leaned into the motion, tension seeming to flow out of her as she smiled.</p>
<p>“I missed you,” Basira said softly, and leaned in.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>After a few minutes, Michael grew impatient enough with the… private conversations happening around it to interrupt them. Martin had sighed and insisted they at least sit down, and after the amount of time they’d spent walking that day, Basira had been in total agreement.</p>
<p>“What I don’t get,” Daisy said to Michael, “is why you didn’t just bring them to us right away.”</p>
<p>The creature was sitting on the floor in the center of the hallway, legs crossed-- possibly more crossed than they should have been; Basira didn’t really want to look to closely.</p>
<p>“The stuff in the Archivist’s cottage, you wanted us to see it, didn’t you?” Martin asked.</p>
<p>Jon frowned. “But then why not take <em>us</em> there? And why wait a whole night to do it?”</p>
<p>“It hasn’t been a night,” Basira said, and then frowned at Michael.</p>
<p>“Time is difficult,” it said, like that should be explanation enough. Maybe it is. It turned to Daisy. “And I didn’t bring them to you because James was keeping a very close eye on the two of you.”</p>
<p>“Was?” Martin asked.</p>
<p>“I made a distraction,” Michael said, smug, and did not elaborate.</p>
<p>“And Elias can’t see through your influence,” Jon realized, and then— “Wait, did you call him James?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Michael replied. “Michael Shelley knew Elias Bouchard very well, before I became him. He was worried, back then, about how interested James Wright was in his fellow apprentice—and how James seemed to be encouraging Elias to distrust Gertrude.”</p>
<p>He huffed a small laugh. “He would have been right to do so, of course, but after Michael became me, I was curious about whether he had known what she was planning and simply chosen to let Michael suffer. I discovered that his other assistant, a man by the name of Graham, was in fact a creature that was bound just as I was.”</p>
<p>“The not-Them,” Martin realized.</p>
<p>“That is what James called it,” Michael allowed. “I tried to speak to it, once, but it was afraid of him, although James had never seemed especially intimidating to Michael. Of course, neither had Gertrude, when she was alive. And then, one day, James died, and Elias took over—and suddenly the not-Them was afraid of him. And when he tried to visit Gertrude’s cottage, to investigate her experiments, his confusion tasted exactly like James’.”</p>
<p>“So Elias— the original Elias— got replaced by James Wright,” Jon said slowly, “after he was convinced to trust James, and only James.”</p>
<p>His voice was shaking, and Basira remembered with a sudden rush how everyone had described Jon’s increasing paranoia, the way he had slowly lost his trust in everyone around him.</p>
<p>Martin took Jon’s hand, giving it a squeeze, and then he turned to Michael and missed the soft look of wonder on Jon’s face.</p>
<p>“So, what, you got a fake dragon from somewhere to stop him from doing the same to Jon?”</p>
<p>Basira blinked. With all the discussion surrounding curses that were people and people who were different people, she’d nearly forgotten the creature that had actually drawn them here in the first place.</p>
<p>She looked at Daisy— who’d been stolen by the thing, after all— and found her staring at Jon, an almost soft look on her face. He took a deep breath, looking down at his hands and not at Martin.</p>
<p>“Actually…”</p>
<p>As Jon told his—rather horrifying—story, Basira studied Daisy. Clearly she’d heard the tale before, wincing in sympathy before he recounted an especially alarming detail.</p>
<p>When he’d finished, there was a long, thoughtful silence.</p>
<p>“I don’t understand,” Martin said, and Jon visibly tensed next to him. He’d tried to take his hand away from Martin’s partway through the story, but Martin had held onto him, and now Jon stared at their fingers like something precious and fragile. “How would—switching bodies like that even work? If James or Elias or whatever can exist outside of his body, wouldn’t he just turn into something like you?”</p>
<p>Jon flinched—maybe at being described as some<em>thing</em>—but answered, “I’m not sure, but I have a guess, based on his strategy of developing a one-sided trust bond with his… host. Magic isn’t meant to be chopped up in pieces, and it’s not meant to exist without a body. So when the bulk of his magic leaves his body, it’s drawn by the link to the piece of itself in the empty but living host body.”</p>
<p>Martin nodded slowly, thoughtful. “But you can’t go into a body and stay there, because you don’t have any links.”</p>
<p>It made sense, Basira thought, except…</p>
<p>“I’m linked to the Crown, now, and—” Jon broke off, looking away from Martin and toward Michael. “Before you—were bound, to Michael, you were simply a curse bound to an object, correct?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” it said slowly, and Jon nodded.</p>
<p>“You distorted the forest,” he confirmed. “But there were no reports of these… hallways. That could simply mean that you don’t normally let people out of them, but—”</p>
<p>“I don’t,” Michael agreed, “But you’re right. They’re a part of being Michael.”</p>
<p>Daisy leaned forward. “So, the second binding…”</p>
<p>“If it’s strong enough, it keeps the magic from returning to either body,” Jon confirmed. “It probably helped that both the forest—or the trapped object in the forest—and the original Michael already had their own magic, so the bodies weren’t otherwise empty; Elias is linked to the Crown too, after all, but it’s nearly full of other magic. The counterweight of it probably allows him to retain enough integrity to last until he can enter the body he’s linked to.”</p>
<p>Martin was frowning. “If… if that’s how it works,” he said slowly, “then—what’s your second link? Or—you trusted Elias, right, was it him?”</p>
<p>Jon cleared his throat, eyes fixed on the rug. “It works the opposite way, actually,” he said. “It’s someone who has some of your magic, so… someone who still trusted me almost implicitly, even though I’d been acting like a complete ass.”</p>
<p>Martin’s frown didn’t disappear, and Basira exchanged an incredulous look with Daisy as he slowly asked, “Melanie?”</p>
<p>“What?” Jon replied, looking completely poleaxed. “No, Melanie hates me—”</p>
<p>“She really doesn’t,” Martin argued, “you know, people actually tend to like you once they get to know you, Jon, even if you can be a total— oh.”</p>
<p>“Well, the dragon version of me didn’t maul a fully-armed knight for <em>Melanie</em>,” Jon said dryly.</p>
<p>“Oh,” Martin replied, going red to the tips of the ears. “I, um—oh.”</p>
<p>“Thank you, Martin,” Jon replied, his tone softening. “I’m not sure I deserved your trust, but it almost certainly saved my life, so… thank you.”</p>
<p>“Anytime,” Martin said, dripping with tender sincerity, and then he seemed to hear exactly what he’d said, and winced.</p>
<p>There was a long and very awkward pause, during which Martin and Jon both looked very pointedly away from each other and Michael looked between them like they were a particularly interesting play.</p>
<p>Finally, Jon cleared his throat and asked for the journal Martin was carrying, pointing out that he could almost certainly adapt the spell that had trapped the distortion in Michael to fix his own magic. As the discussion devolved into Jon interrogating Michael about everything he knew about the spell, Martin returned to watching him with a vaguely awed look on his face.</p>
<p>Basira turned to Daisy, who was watching the two of them with fond amusement.</p>
<p>“Were we ever that oblivious?” she murmured, and Basira snorted.</p>
<p>“It did take me a month or two to realize that dead monsters were your version of courting gifts,” she said, and Daisy grinned toothily.</p>
<p>“You liked them anyway,” she pointed out, and Basira shrugged, feeling an answering grin spread across her face.</p>
<p>Before they’d actually met, Basira had admired the legendary Sir Alice Tonner, the best monster-hunter in the kingdom, as much as her fellow knights had. As they’d gotten to know each other better, Basira had come to love her for her dry wit and her passion, for the way she hid neither her ‘unladylike’ ferocity nor her surprising penchant for soppy romantic ballads.</p>
<p>Not all of that was the curse, surely.</p>
<p>“He can treat you, can’t he?” Basira asked quietly, tilting her head in Jon’s direction.</p>
<p>Daisy nodded, expression going solemn. “Once he figures out his own thing, yeah.”</p>
<p>“Does it… will it hurt you?” Basira asked, and Daisy blinked at her, eyes narrowed.</p>
<p>“Melanie said—”</p>
<p>Basira cut her off, her worry rising. “I meant—long term. What you were saying that night, before we caught Martin.”</p>
<p>Daisy sighed, looking away. She studied her hands with a strange intensity, curling her fingers as though she expected claws to spring out like a cat’s.</p>
<p>“I haven’t asked,” she said slowly, “but… when he first saw me, he thought I was some kind of hunt monster, not even human. Like that.” She jerked her head, indicating Michael. “It can’t be a good sign that he had to look that closely.”</p>
<p>Basira frowned. Michael was as far from human as it seemed possible to be while still looking the part; it seemed ridiculous for him and Daisy to fall even remotely into the same category.</p>
<p>Then again, she realized, Sasha had felt entirely normal. Even Jon, who described himself as a monster and certainly had felt like one that night in the forest, seemed mostly human in the light of—well, not day.</p>
<p>Where <em>was</em> the light coming from? There was plenty of it, but Basira realized she hadn’t seen a single window or torch the whole time she’d been here. Another thing that just didn’t make sense. Maybe Michael was the exception, not the rule, something that seemed wrong because that was the reaction it <em>wanted</em>.</p>
<p>“Are you going to ask him to do it?”</p>
<p>Daisy frowned, and Basira wondered how much of her worry had been given away by her tone.</p>
<p>“Do you not want me to?”</p>
<p>“I want you to be okay,” Basira replied in a frustrated whisper. “The bracelet was hurting you, but—if there’s some way you can control it yourself, without having him come and rip your magic apart—”</p>
<p>“And what if I can’t?” Daisy hissed back. “What if I let this go on and I hurt someone? If I turn into something like Michael that preys on innocent people?”</p>
<p>There was real fear in her voice, the kind that made Basira bite back her instinctive <em>you wouldn’t</em>.</p>
<p>“We won’t let it get that far,” she said instead, and she knows there’s a note of pleading in her voice. “You can… practice, and if either of us thinks it’s getting out of hand, we slap the bracelet on and come right back here to let him do it.”</p>
<p>She was holding Daisy’s hand in hers, though she couldn’t quite remember reaching for it. Daisy stared at her, gaze searching, and Basira squeezed her hand.</p>
<p>“It’s your choice, obviously,” she said. “But…”</p>
<p>Basira didn’t know how to continue. <em>I don’t want to you to die? To change? To leave me alone?</em></p>
<p>It had been Basira’s potential as a hunter, that shared passion and shared competence, that had attracted Daisy to her. She’d known it even before Daisy had said so, that night in the forest. There were other things, Basira knew, but—would the Daisy who wasn’t a hunter still love them?</p>
<p>It was selfish of her, and she’d never have spoken up if the treatment didn’t actually seem so risky, but… Basira was afraid.</p>
<p>“Alright,” Daisy said slowly, studying her. “I’ll wait and see.”</p>
<p>Basira blinked. “Seriously?”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Daisy replied, raising an eyebrow. “I mean, the process to remove it sounds… invasive. It would be stupid to rush into it without looking for something less extreme, and Jon or Melanie might have some ideas we haven’t tried yet.”</p>
<p>Basira’s breath left her in a rush of relief, but Daisy wasn’t done yet.</p>
<p>“You have to promise me, though,” she said, holding Basira’s hand more tightly. “If I start to cross a line, if you even suspect I’m going to hurt someone, we stop things.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, of course—”</p>
<p>Daisy huffed in frustration, cutting Basira off. “I don’t mean just talk to me—I mean, try that first, but… I need you to promise that if I can’t stop, you’ll stop me.”</p>
<p>Basira’s stomach twisted.</p>
<p>“Daisy, I—”</p>
<p>“Basira, please.”</p>
<p>“Okay,” Basira said finally. “I promise.”</p>
<p>Daisy sighed, leaning back and easing the pressure on Basira’s hand.</p>
<p>“Okay,” she said, and when she opened her eyes she was smiling. “Okay, let’s—”</p>
<p>“Wait—”</p>
<p>Basira shot to her feet at Martin’s shout, hand going to her sword as she turned around.</p>
<p>Martin, Michael, and Jon were still sitting on the floor where they had been, the wall behind them covered in scratched numerals and sigils. Martin’s hand was clasped tightly around Jon’s left wrist, the daisy bracelet clutched in Jon’s fingers.</p>
<p>For a frozen moment, they all stare at him, Michael leaning forward in catlike interest, Basira’s fist closing around her sword. Behind her, she could hear Daisy breathing steady and deliberate. Alert.</p>
<p>Finally, Jon sighed, the lines around his eyes going slack. “I’m alright, Martin.”</p>
<p>Martin sputtered. “You didn’t even—take <em>precautions, </em>or—”</p>
<p>“It was going to work,” Jon said dismissively. “Martin, I—”</p>
<p>“You didn’t know that!” Martin shouted, gesturing sharply.</p>
<p>Jon rocked slightly with the motion, dropping the bracelet, and Martin let go of his wrist like it was a hot iron.</p>
<p>“Shit, sorry,” Martin said. “I just—you need to be more careful.”</p>
<p>There was something raw in his voice, and without thinking Basira reached out for Daisy’s hand, a pang of relief hitting her as those long, callused fingers threaded through her own.</p>
<p>What must it be like, to care that much about someone and to lose them? To get them back, after months of grief, only to watch them throw themselves carelessly into danger?</p>
<p>“Martin,” Jon said, his voice soft. “It’s alright. Even if it hadn’t worked, I wouldn’t have hurt you—"</p>
<p>“You think— I <em>know</em> you wouldn’t hurt me,” Martin snapped, and Jon blinked. “I just—I need <em>you</em> to be alright.”</p>
<p>Basira’s hand was squeezed tightly as Daisy sighed. Jon was blinking at Martin, confusion on his face.</p>
<p>“Oh,” he said slowly, a faint perplexed smile on his face. “Well… I’ll be fine, Martin.”</p>
<p>“You would not have been, if the spell had not taken,” Michael broke in, and Martin and Jon jerked to stare at him. “This is not a good place to be so… uninhibited a watcher.”</p>
<p>“Right,” Jon replied, sounding faintly ill as he turned back to Martin, who was staring at him with renewed horror. “I’ll try to be more careful.”</p>
<p>“That’s all I’m asking,” Martin replied with exhaustion.</p>
<p>Daisy stepped forward, pulling Basira with her. “Now that that’s figured out—what are we doing about Bouchard?”</p>
<p>Martin frowned, turning to Michael. “He can’t see anything to do with you, right? Why not just pop us into the tower, stab him in the back?”</p>
<p>Basira raised an eyebrow, amused. Martin was far more comfortable with the idea of murdering his employer than she would have expected.</p>
<p>“What if he just jumps bodies again?” she pointed out. “We have to cut him off from the Crown somehow.”</p>
<p>“And we have to distract him while we do it,” Daisy added. “And preferably kill him right after. He strikes me as the type to run off when he knows he’s beaten, and he’s a lord. He’ll have powerful friends to run off to.”</p>
<p>She sounded focused, thoughtful, perhaps even a touch excited. Basira knew that tone. As far as Daisy was concerned, the hunt was on.</p>
<p>“So he’s a powerful wizard, at least semi-immortal, with resources we don’t know anything about—and he’s omniscient,” Basira said. It would be more difficult than any hunt they’d ever done, for sure. A challenge.</p>
<p>“Don’t forget the little stranger,” Michael added helpfully, and Basira cursed silently. From the expression on the others’ faces, they’d forgotten about the not-Sasha as well.</p>
<p>“The Stranger conceals,” Jon said thoughtfully, reaching into his pocket and producing a weathered leather-bound journal. Basira noticed that it was marked with a wide, staring eye, like the archives symbol without the opened book.</p>
<p>“Maybe we can get it to help us,” Daisy said thoughtfully. “I mean, it was Sasha who told us to look for the Archivist’s cottage. If he’s keeping it trapped, maybe it has a grudge-- Jon, you said Magnus’ notes made it seem like it hated him, right?”</p>
<p>Jon didn’t reply.</p>
<p>“Jon?” Martin asked. Jon was frowning down at the journal, and Basira could swear she saw his eyes flicker bright green.</p>
<p>He brought up his hand, tracing a shape in the air. The journal glowed pale green for a moment before returning to normal—except, Basira realized, the etchings on the spine she had thought were simply faded decoration or the mark of time had resolved into letters: <em>Observations of the Lesser Stranger.</em></p>
<p>Wordlessly, Jon passed the open journal to Martin, who stared at it with the trepidation of a man accepting a live snake.</p>
<p>“You couldn’t just—”</p>
<p>He stopped, staring down at the open page before him.</p>
<p>“Stop being dramatic,” Basira said, uneasy. “What does it say?”</p>
<p>“It’s not what it says that’s the problem,” Martin said, and Jon let out a shaky breath.</p>
<p>“I wasn’t sure I was right,” he said, and he sounded as though he wished he hadn’t been. “The magic is the same, but I thought perhaps there was some kind of… store in the Crown, we know he can eat magic—”</p>
<p>“What are you talking about?” Daisy asked.</p>
<p>“The handwriting,” Martin said, flipping the journal to face them. The symbol from the cover was sketched painstakingly, a line of flowery cursive below it: <em>Property of Lord Jonah Magnus</em>. “It’s exactly like Elias’.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Daisy didn’t love this plan.  </p><p>Some of that had to do with the fact that she didn’t trust Michael as far as she could throw him, let alone with Basira. She also just didn’t like relying on outsiders and civilians in general—Martin didn’t seem like he had much in the way of nerve, and while Daisy was actually starting to like Jon, he was also definitely a hot mess at times, and the plan relied on all of them to keep it together. </p><p>But beyond any of that, there was one other reason Daisy downright <em>hated </em>about this plan: riding a dragon was terrifying. </p><p>She wasn’t so much <em>riding </em>Jon as being carried, but that didn’t help the part of her that was screaming that the only thing between her and a thousand-foot drop to the punishing ground below was some other creature’s whim. </p><p>When the Panopticon came sweeping into her view, she was almost relieved for a moment despite the crushing weight of Bouchard—Magnus’—gaze on her back. </p><p>Then the tower was rushing nearer, far faster than even a horse could travel, and Daisy was shouting despite herself. </p><p>“Sims, if you smash me into that gods-cursed tower I swear to fuck I <em>will</em>—” </p><p>Her voice rose to a screech as the side of the tower filled her vision, and then she was swung upward as Jon flared his wings and hovered impossibly over the exposed balcony. She was dropped a short distance, maybe a foot longer than the jump off a horse, and then Jon was folding himself into his body. He fell to the ground with much more force and much less grace than Daisy had, nearly pitching over the railing before she could catch him by the collar of his tunic. </p><p>“Sorry, were you saying something at the end there?” Jon asked when he righted himself. </p><p>Daisy shook her head, stepping toward the door, then froze. “Wait, why didn’t you just carry me inside, like with your body?” </p><p>Jon blinked. “Well, I figured you preferred to be able to see where we were going—” </p><p>“Right, okay,” she said, though she wasn’t sure she’d make that choice if she had another chance. That familiar prickle ran up her spine. “Let’s just get on with this.” </p><p>“Yes, alright,” he replied, mouth ticking up in the corner for a moment as he strode to the door. Then he frowned, glancing over his shoulder and at the ground below.</p><p>“I wonder where Tim is,” he said thoughtfully. “Normally he tries to shoot me out of the sky.”</p><p>“Just… let us in.” </p><p>Jon pressed his hand to the door, and there was a dim green flash before it swung open. He frowned, eyes flicking up to the tower apprehensively. </p><p>“Overconfident,” Daisy said, striding through.  </p><p>They crept up the last flight of stairs, Jon walking slowly to try and hide his footsteps. Daisy waited impatiently for him at the door, trying to avoid its strange carved stare. </p><p>Instead, she met Jon’s eyes one last time, took a deep breath, and yanked the door open. </p><p>Jon flooded through, for a moment just a billowing mass of glowing green slowly obscuring his bundle-of-sticks body—and then his long, serpentine throat took shape, and a scraping, hissing wall of sound thundered through the wide space. </p><p>When he’d first tried this, right after Michael had unceremoniously dumped the two of them back in Magnus’ library, Daisy had been scared for a moment that the binding had failed, that they’d have to reformulate the plan. But the magic had enfolded his body just as it was doing now, still thoroughly tied to it, and the dragon was under perfect control.</p><p>Daisy slipped into the room after him, scanning it as quickly as she could. Elias was lounging on the throne, one leg crossed casually over the other. He turned to Jon, eyes going wide as he followed the dragon’s progress across the room toward him. Jon’s claws bounced off his chest, and Daisy suppressed a brief spark of disappointment as she dashed forward, staying low to the ground. It had been too much to expect that Elias’ reflexes would be slow enough that this could end so quickly. </p><p>But his eyes were fixed on Jon, who was wheeling against the far wall as though to lunge in for another strike, and so he didn’t notice Daisy raising her dagger behind him—at least, not until it’s too late. </p><p>He flinched to the side of his strange throne, but the dagger still sunk into his back. They’d been right—like most wizards, he’d been too focused on deflecting magical attacks; or perhaps he’d been telling the truth when he said he knew little defensive magic. </p><p>Daisy wrenched her dagger free, and Magnus went limp. Across the room, Jon folded himself back into his body once more, cautiously approaching as Daisy circled around to face the front of the chair. </p><p>“Is he dead?” Jon asked, hushed shock filling his voice. </p><p>“Oh, Jon,” Elias said, eyes flying open, and Daisy lunged in for another strike—but some strange force caught her, freezing her limbs still, and then pressed her to the side so he could look at Jon. “Did you <em>really </em>think it would be that easy?” </p><p>His eyes glowed the same unearthly firefly green as the Watcher’s Crown above his head, and his smile was wide and vicious.  </p><p>“You’re dying, Elias,” Jon growled, and though his dragon form was tucked away, his eyes glowed with that same unearthly light and his voice crackled with a static hiss. </p><p>Elias shivered theatrically. “Oh, that is delightful.” </p><p>“Cut the bullshit, Magnus,” Daisy growled. “Even if you’re gonna take a bit longer to die than we thought, you’re <em>done</em>. We know everything.” </p><p>Magnus chuckled. “Everything? Oh, I very much doubt that, Sir Tonner. Even I couldn’t manage omniscience, and I’ve spent a considerable amount of effort, time, and… bodies attempting it.” </p><p>He paused, smirk curling wider at the corners. “My condolences about Martin and Sir Hussein, by the way. There are such awful monsters in those mountains.” </p><p>“Fuck off,” Daisy said, and Bouchard smirked at the fury in her tone. “Basira is fine.” </p><p>Magnus sighed, waving a hand, and Daisy found her mouth stuck tightly shut. “I’ve seen enough people swallowed by that particular curse to know it’s not the type to let people go once they’ve gotten as far as she did, though I will admit it’s possible. This world never ceases to surprise me—always more to learn, as they say.” </p><p>“Must be frustrating,” Jon said dryly, but his fingers curled into claws as he glanced at Daisy. He didn’t trust Michael any more than she did.</p><p>“Oh, quite the opposite,” Magnus replied. “Take you, Jon.” </p><p>He pulled in a slow breath, loud and surprisingly ragged, but his voice was clear and excited as he continued.  </p><p>“I told you the last time you stormed in here that I was proud of you, but the things you’ve done since then, what you’ve <em>become</em>…” </p><p>The last time a man had looked at Daisy the way Elias looked at Jon then, she’d kicked him in the groin. His gaze was all hunger, no magic, and somehow it made her skin crawl all the worse. Jon visibly curled in on himself as Elias went on. </p><p>“I never could have imagined it. My god, I thought the not-them was fascinating, but you? A pure magical construct, made corporeal and entirely stable outside the body?  I’ll be studying you for decades, if not centuries.” </p><p>“And why the hell would I let you do that?” Jon growled. </p><p>“Oh, that’s quite simple,” Magnus raised a trembling hand and clicked his fingers. From behind him, there came the creak of a door swinging open. </p><p>“Finally,” said the voice of the thing that was not Sasha James, echoing up the stairwell. </p><p>“I’ve been feeding you for two hundred years, pet, you can wait for me to have a bit of fun,” Magnus replied, gesturing weakly with his hand before it fell back into his lap. </p><p>“I am not your pet.” Sasha’s kind face was twisted to an ugly snarl as she climbed the stairs—and she was dragging the limp body of Tim Stoker behind her, lifting him easily with a strength disproportionate to her angular form. “If not for that awful trap—” </p><p>“You’d swallow me whole?” Magnus guessed, smirking in amusement. “Maybe two hundred years ago, but I think nowadays we both know who has… the quicker jaw, so to speak.” </p><p>The not-Sasha growled impatiently. “I’d better at least get a meal out of this.” </p><p>“What is this supposed to be?” Jon demanded. “I let you imprison me, take over my body, and kill people with it, and in exchange you promise to let Tim go? We both know that you’re willing to kill anyone who gets in your way.” </p><p>“Oh, but our dear Mr. Stoker really has no idea what’s going on,” Magnus said. “Martin is gone, no matter what hopes you may harbor. Once my pet finds a new host, Tim will have no reason to stay in this ‘gods-cursed tower’ he hates so much.” </p><p>“And what, you expect him to just leave without any explanation?” Jon asked.  </p><p>“Of course not,” Magnus replied indulgently. “I have a few hours left, I think. Poor Tim will wake up in perhaps an hour to find signs of forced entry, in addition to a fairly minor head wound, and stumble his way up to the top of the tower—where he’ll discover that Sir Tonner has gone on a rampage, stabbed me, and killed his friend Sasha before I could restrain her. After that, convincing Mr. Stoker to go home to his brother will be child’s play, and will allow me to take your body without challenge.” </p><p>Jon went quiet, and Magnus’ smile widened.  </p><p>“Of course, I <em>will</em> be needing a new body soon, as you’ve inflicted some… premature wear on my current one,” he said, tilting his head at Daisy. “If I don’t have access to yours, well, Mr. Stoker trusts me almost as much as you used to after what I did for his brother.” </p><p>“So you’ll let Tim go,” Jon replied tiredly, “and in exchange, I let you experiment on me, and feed Daisy to your pet, and keep hurting people.” </p><p>“I imagine I will do those last two things regardless,” Magnus said dismissively. “But if I could discover how your form is maintained, adapt it to fit my purposes, well… the necessity of flesh has always seemed rather limiting to me. If I can survive without stealing whatever pitiful bodies come to me, well, all the better.” </p><p>Jon looked down, muscles in his skinny arms tensed.  </p><p>“Don’t look so dejected, Jon,” Magnus chuckled. “I take good care of my pets, don’t I, Sasha?” </p><p>“That isn’t Sasha,” Jon growled, and then he stopped. Daisy stared at him, watching as he tilted his head.  </p><p>“What?” Magnus demanded, voice going reedy and thin for a moment, and Daisy frowned. </p><p>“I’ll do it,” Jon said, “but I want one other thing. It shouldn’t be too much of an inconvenience, really, you’re a smooth enough liar to pull it off.” </p><p>There was disgust coloring his tone, but Magnus ignored it, leaning forward with a flicker of impatience burning in his eyes. “What is it?” </p><p>Jon strode closer, leaning down to murmur in his ear. Daisy hurriedly channeled her magic to her own ears, picking up the tail end of the words. </p><p>“—her go. Right now.” </p><p>Magnus leaned back in his chair, looking thoughtful. </p><p>“You know,” he said finally. “I was surprised at how easily those connections lapsed before. I’m looking forward to making sense of you someday, Jon.” </p><p>“Well, it’s looking like you’ll have the time,” Jon muttered, looking away.  </p><p>His eyes caught Daisy’s, and she glared. What the hell was he doing—bargaining for her life? They’d had a <em>plan</em>, and whatever Magnus had promised, they both knew he wouldn’t let anyone who knew even a hint of his plans leave alive. </p><p>“Quite,” Magnus replied. “Sasha, come here.” </p><p>The not-Sasha drew closer, eyeing Daisy with excitement and making her thankful the invisible bonds gave her no space to flinch. </p><p>As she rounded the chair, though, Magnus grabbed the not-Sasha by the arm and pulled her down, faster than Daisy would have believed possible. </p><p>“Look at me,” he growled savagely. The not-Sasha obeyed, seemingly helpless to break that glowing stare, even as she began to cry out in pain. Dropping Stoker, she started to twitch, and when her legs gave out beneath her, Jon darted in to support her weight, Magnus’ white-knuckled hand holding her in place. </p><p>Her cries slowly weakened as Magnus’ eyes grew brighter and brighter, until all of a sudden he let go. She crumpled, bringing Jon down to the floor with her. </p><p>“I was right,” Jon said, stroking a lock of dark hair away from her face. “She’s still there.” </p><p>He hadn’t bargained for Daisy, then, but for his friend—his friend who was <em>already dead</em>.</p><p>“She won’t ever wake,” Magnus pointed out dismissively, voice shaking as though the effort has drained him. “I’ve studied this. She has far too little magic left to be fully conscious—it’s enough to keep her alive, but even under a stasis spell she’ll essentially succumb to dehydration.” </p><p>“At least then she’ll die as herself,” Jon said softly, laying Sasha’s body gently on the floor before standing.  </p><p>So would Daisy, she realized. Maybe Sasha wasn’t the only one he’d been trying to help.</p><p>“If you like,” Magnus replied. “Now, are you done?” </p><p>“Yes, alright,” Jon said tiredly, standing. He turned to Daisy. “I’m sorry about this.” </p><p><em>Fuck off, you dramatic idiot,</em> she tried to convey through her glare. He looked down, swallowing, then turned back to Magnus.  </p><p>“What do I need to do?” </p><p>Magnus smiled, wide and predatory and utterly sincere. </p><p>“Look at me.” </p><p>Jon met his eyes, unblinking, and—well, that was all Daisy could see, really. They stared at each other, Magnus leering, Jon frowning as ever—and then there was a flash of green light, quickly absorbed by the Watcher’s Crown above, and Jon’s body crumpled to the floor. </p><p>“I’ll give him some time to settle down, I think,” Magnus said, apparently to Daisy. “A few months of isolation tends to cause some change in perspective for these creatures, I’ve found.” </p><p>Experimentally, Daisy tried to struggle, to speak, to no avail. </p><p>Magnus coughed, a deep, wet thing that left his lips coated with blood. </p><p>“Oh,” he said, absolutely unsurprised, “I didn’t notice before—you’ve nicked something rather important, Sir Tonner. I suppose I won’t be able to explain things to poor Tim after all, not in a body he trusts enough to believe. I’m sure Jon will understand.” </p><p><em>Bastard</em>, Daisy thinks, and then, <em>fuck, is he actually dying? Already?</em> </p><p>“You know… this really is a rather… unpleasant way to die,” he gasped haltingly. “I think I may keep you… too. I know some people… who I’d like to see… this way, someday.” </p><p><em>Like hell you will</em>, Daisy wanted to reply, but the hope was fading away. The plan had been good, but clearly something had gone terribly wrong. If Magnus ever did let her out, she decided, she was going to hunt down Michael and rip him to shreds. </p><p>“If you’ll… excuse me…” Magnus went on, coughing again. Gods, the man was seconds from death and <em>still talking. </em>“I…” </p><p>He trailed off, and then suddenly the bonds holding Daisy still fell away. She looked up just in time to see the unearthly glow fade from his eyes, and then Magnus’ body went limp. He was smirking. </p><p>Heart in her throat, Daisy stepped toward Jon’s limp form, raising her dagger. Him first, Stoker next, before Bouchard could get his bearings. </p><p>The plan had failed. All that was left was to make sure Bouchard didn’t win, either. </p><p>***  </p><p>“I hate this plan,” Martin grumbled.  </p><p>Basira sighed, staring at the wall in front of them. She studiously ignored the mirror in the corner of her eye, which appeared indecisive about whether to reflect Basira, or the wooden slats of the opposite wall. </p><p>“You know I do too, Martin, but we agreed that it was the best option.” </p><p>“Jon’s a self-sacrificing idiot sometimes,” Martin argued, eyes flickering nervously from the thick imported rug to the mirror on the dark flagstone wall. “And Daisy—” </p><p>“Daisy knows what she’s doing,” Basira said firmly. “It’s going to work.” </p><p>It had better work. Self-sacrificing isn’t something she’d call Daisy, but she’d never had the strongest self-preservation instinct, especially when she thought Basira was in danger. </p><p>“Just don’t screw up your part,” Basira told Martin, which of course made him go even paler. </p><p>“I’m—”  </p><p>He broke off, eyes going wide, and Basira straightened, flipping her visor down. </p><p>“Now?”  </p><p>“Now,” he breathed, and then yelled, “M-michael, we need the door, now!” </p><p>There was no response. Basira turned to face the mirror full on, remembering the strange figures that had appeared in it when they’d been wandering before. Beside her, Martin was growing increasingly frantic. </p><p>“Basira, what if—” </p><p>“Michael,” she said, voice frigidly calm. “If you do not open that door right now, I will smash every mirror in these hallways until I find your puny little—” </p><p>In the reflected hallway, a distant shadow disappeared around a corner; at Basira’s side, a door swung open. </p><p>She caught the back of Martin’s collar before he could simply charge through. Outside the door, Basira could at first see only the dark night sky, but when she looked down she found a brilliant green light at her feet. The Watcher’s Crown. </p><p>“Careful,” she told Martin as she stepped gingerly over the thing and onto one of the wooden beams supporting it. Martin followed, face screwed up as though he expected the beam to shatter under him, where it hadn’t under a knight in full plate.  </p><p>“You’re welcome,” the Distortion said irritably, and the door they’d just exited slammed shut. For a moment, it hung in the air, incongruous, and then it was simply gone, as though it had been nothing but a fever dream. </p><p>Basira shook her head, looking down at the Watcher’s Crown. She resisted the urge to try to peer through the glare on the glass and find Daisy, instead studying the gem. As she watches, a hairline fracture crawls across the surface, and she raises her sword, resting the tip in the indent. </p><p>“I still don’t understand why you’re so sure this will work,” Martin muttered nervously. She glanced back and saw him studying the gem intently, green light reflecting bright and fey in his grey eyes. Fleetingly, she wondered if it was possible to live for so long under this all-seeing eye without any effect. </p><p>“Jon’s helping,” Basira said, drawing the sword up to strike. “And I told you, this isn’t a normal sword. Get your shield ready.” </p><p>“Right,” Martin stuttered from behind her, and Basira swung, plunging her sword into the center of the strange, glowing crystal. Cracks spread from the point of impact, leaving dark trails in the burning after-image on Basira’s eyelids. The crystal pulsed brighter, light growing slightly paler, and then the cracks spread as the crystal shook, the supports groaning in stress. </p><p>And then the crystal exploded, shards flying up toward her and pinging against her armor. Green light—magic—poured out toward them as well, flaring up against an invisible shield before curling in on itself. Behind her, Martin yelped as the wood and glass shuddered beneath them from the force, and then gave way.  </p><p>Basira fell heavily to the stone floor, hearing the glass roof shatter and crash to the ground around her with a terrible, scraping scream—or, no, wait. </p><p>Rolling to her feet, Basira came face to face with Jon. His large eyes bored into her, long scaled body undulating behind him. Then he roared directly in her face, wild as the first night they’d met. </p><p>“Where did you get that sword,” his voice snarled, and Basira whirled, feeling like she’d been doused in cold water. Everything from the accent to the eyes was completely wrong, and Basira stumbled back, sword coming up to guard. There was the sound of wood splitting beneath her, and then the hollow crack of bone. She glanced down for a moment and found Elias’ arm twisted beneath shards of glass and the boot of her armor. </p><p>“You’re Magnus,” she said, horror threatening to overwhelm her as she looked back at Jon’s face. “We were too slow.” </p><p>The tugging Martin felt when Jon was using him as an anchor was the only signal they’d been able to think of that would reach them in Michael’s corridors. He’d been confident that he could get Magnus to put him away well before Elias’ body died, so they could destroy the crystal while he was too wounded and distracted to interfere but before he jumped bodies. But they hadn’t been fast enough.</p><p>“Do you know what you’ve done?” Magnus snarled, advancing on her. It took every ounce of Basira’s courage and common sense not to back away—she was in full plate armor, and yet the sheer fury he radiated felt like a physical force pushing against her. </p><p>Jon screeched and lunged at Magnus, but the man lifted a hand and the dragon bounced off. That <em>damn </em>shield. </p><p>“Oh, god, Jon,” Martin said, dragging himself to his feet. Jon twisted to look at him, and Martin flinched as though struck. “Your body—” </p><p>“It wasn’t your fault,” Daisy replied, staggering upright. Basira looked her over as quickly as she could while Jon launched himself at Elias again—her partner was covered in small cuts, but they were already healing as Daisy’s magic kicked in. She’d be fine, if they can find a way out of this. “The idiot went off plan in some mad attempt to save Sasha. And—” She pauses, and then with black humor adds, “I really thought Elias would be better at dodging. Guess omniscience really is impossible.” </p><p>“I will <em>kill </em>you,” Magnus growled, and then nearly failed to deflect a swipe from Jon’s claws. “I will peel your magic from your veins and—” </p><p>He yelped and dodged out of the way as Jon opened his mouth, ghostly green fire pouring from his throat. </p><p>Basira started to follow, raising her sword, but Martin caught her arm. </p><p>“No—Jon’s body—” </p><p>“It’s not his anymore,” Basira snapped back. “Look, even he’s not trying to save it—” </p><p>She broke off as Jon attacked Magnus again, his tail lashing furiously and forcing her to step back. Once again, Jon’s teeth glanced away from Magnus skin, and he reared back. </p><p>“He can’t keep blocking that,” Daisy said quietly, drawing up to Basira’s side. “Melanie told us, that shield takes—” </p><p>They ducked, Basira dragging Martin to the ground, as a large wing swept out through the space where they’d been standing, extending for a moment to the edge of the tower before Jon snapped it back in. </p><p>“You need to go,” Basira hissed at Martin, and he opened his mouth to protest. “The Crown is gone and Jon’s cut off from his body again. You’re the only strong link he has, which means if you die we’re all dead. Go.” </p><p>“Take James and Stoker,” Daisy added. “We’ll cover you.” </p><p>Martin hesitated for a moment longer, his eyes darting from the unconscious bodies on the floor to the corner of the room, where Jon had Elias pinned to the ground for a moment before invisible force threw him off. </p><p>Then, with a frustrated noise, Martin darted away, slinging Sasha’s body over his shoulder and hooking Tim’s under the arm before stumbling toward the stairwell.  </p><p>Magnus stumbled after him, eyes flaring bright, and then dodged back as Daisy lunged in, dagger flashing as she swung. Basira closed in from the other side, thrusting with her sword, and Magnus snarled as the blade grazed his shoulder before he could dodge. An invisible wind shoved hard against her and made her stumble back for a moment, before Magnus whirled to throw up an arm and block another swipe from Jon, and she could advance again.</p><p>Behind them, the door slammed, and Basira smiled grimly. </p><p>“Just the four of us, now,” she said, and when Magnus turned back there was panic in his eyes along with the fury. “And your magic won’t last you forever.” </p><p>His eyes narrowed in hatred, and Basira cried out, dropping her sword with a clatter as her vision seemed to go grey and fuzzed. It hurt, more than anything she’d ever felt, like something was ripping her apart, and she doubled over. Someone caught her arms and held her up—Daisy, it must be, even through the plate and the agony Basira knew those strong-gentle hands—and then, just as suddenly as it had started, the pain stopped. </p><p>She looked up, eyes swimming, to find Daisy crouched in front of her, smiling.  </p><p>“Remember what you promised,” she said softly. Basira blinked, and Daisy brushed one strong-slim-gentle hand against her cheek before pulling away. </p><p>Her wrist was bare.  </p><p>Daisy turned to face Magnus, and her wrist was <em>bare</em>. </p><p>Basira tried to stand, to reach down to untie the bracelet looped around her armored wrist, to give it back, but her muscles wouldn’t cooperate and the fingers of her gauntlets were thick and clumsy. </p><p>“Better be quick,” Daisy said, voice thick with a predatory growl. He actually stumbled back, toward Jon, who scrabbled ineffectually at that invisible barrier. </p><p>Daisy lunged, snarling like something wild, and Magnus threw up a hand, eyes flashing. </p><p>Mid-leap, Daisy stumbled to the ground, spasming. At first Basira thought—hoped?—it was a flare, but then her partner went limp, and a glowing, rust-red fog began to stream from her body. </p><p>Basira felt her heart sink, and she tried to struggle upright, but the pain was too much.  </p><p>Magnus, though, was frowning, studying the red mist with widening eyes. Behind him, at some point, Jon had stopped too, great serpentine head cocked and a whole colony of eyes opening down the length of his snout. </p><p>“No,” Magnus said as four muscular legs emerged from the mass, planting themselves over Daisy’s body. A furred snout took shape, pointed up at the starry sky, and a fierce hunting cry poured into the night. “No, that’s impossible.” </p><p>*** </p><p><em>I just saw him with what was mine, what he’d </em>stolen, Jon had said, <em>and I guess that’s what the shape comes from.</em> </p><p>Daisy fixed the thought in her mind as she stepped away from Basira.  </p><p><em>Hunt him</em>, she thought. <em>Chase him down, </em>she told herself, told the magic raging under her skin, flaring out and making Magnus flinch, <em>and</em> <em>rip him apart if you want. But you </em>have to<em> protect her.</em> </p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“She’ll come back,” Jon told Basira. His voice was rasping and gentle, a far cry from how it had sounded when Magnus had held his body, but it still made Basira tense and look up.</p><p>Jon lingered in the doorway, looking uncertain. He stood stiffly—apparently, at some point during the fight between Daisy, Magnus, and Jon, he’d cracked a rib.</p><p>“Sit down,” Basira said, and he obeyed, sinking into the chair on the other side of the bed and staring down at Daisy’s still face.</p><p>Daisy always moved when she slept, but for the last three days her body had been utterly, completely still. Basira was glad of it, in a way—she wasn’t sure if she’d have been able to take the surging hope that Daisy had finally returned every time the sleeping, empty body on the bed rolled over.</p><p>The hope Basira already had hurt enough. It had taken form with the wolf that Daisy had become, but it had grown teeth when Magnus had suddenly gone limp beneath Daisy. The fight had ended less than a minute after he’d ripped Daisy’s magic free; unable to replenish his energy, he hadn’t been able to shield himself from Daisy and Jon’s attacks for much longer.</p><p>For a moment, as the wolf had paced away from Jon’s body, Basira had thought Daisy had killed him; but then the dragon had surged inward, folding itself impossibly small and impossibly close, until Jon had shot upright with a gasp.</p><p>He’d immediately started muttering, casting that spell from the corridors, but Basira had turned away, watching the wolf with her breath caught in her chest.</p><p><em>Come back</em>, she’d thought—prayed, begged. For a moment, it looked as though the wolf had heard her, head turning in her direction—but then it had bared its teeth and taken off, loping impossibly over the edge of the tower after some invisible prey.</p><p>“She’ll remember that she did this for you, you know.” Jon was still studying Daisy’s face, one hand toying absently with his braid. “When you’re like that, magic is everything. I remembered Martin, and we were hanging on by a thread-- but Daisy? She trusted you implicitly. She knows what to come back to.”</p><p>Basira turned the daisy bracelet over in her hands. Once the strange wizard who’d made it had assured her that it wouldn’t impede the function of the magic, Basira had spent an evening carving the design—a near perfect copy of the scar on Daisy’s shoulder. Daisy had smiled when she’d seen it, musing that she could tell anyone who asked that it was a gift from her sweetheart and not even be lying.</p><p>Basira had grown to resent the thing when she’d had to watch Daisy writhe in pain as it seemed to turn her magic against her. But there had always been that fond memory attached to it, too. Now…</p><p>“What if it takes too long?” Basira asked him now. “If her body runs out of magic…”</p><p>Jon hesitated, looking down at Daisy. He looked exhausted, dark, heavy bags hanging under his eyes, but his clothes and hair were impeccably neat, a far cry from the ragged man she’d met in Michael’s hallways. He and Martin had been running themselves hard for the last few days, trying to explain things to Tim and Rosie and make sure Sasha and Daisy were well-taken care of.</p><p>“I’ll make something, or figure out how to give her more,” he insisted, jaw set in determination. Basira… well, she believed that he’d try. She wasn’t too familiar with magic, but Jon had duplicated Magnus’ trick of pulling magic free after seeing it done only three times—well, five counting when Magnus had done it to him, but having felt how painful the process was, Basira wasn’t surprised he hadn’t gleaned much from it.</p><p>It was an impressive feat, even if she couldn’t help but resent that he’d gained the knowledge from watching her and Daisy suffer. Maybe whatever quirk of magic or personality that had driven him to pick up Magnus’ technique so quickly meant he’d also be successful at inventing a treatment even Magnus hadn’t discovered—maybe he would even manage it in time to save Sasha, who apparently still had some of her own magic left.</p><p>But Daisy’s body was being sustained only by the scrap of magic the not-Them had apparently implanted as some kind of twisted claim, way back during their first night in the Panopticon. Even if Jon could somehow grow that spark, bolster it into something that could be a person, Basira knew that whatever woke up wouldn’t be Daisy.</p><p>“What if she never comes back?”</p><p>“She will—”</p><p>“Just tell me,” Basira snapped.</p><p>Based on what Jon had seen before he’d returned to his body, whatever links Magnus had weren’t strong enough to let his magic take shape without a body, but they had seemed to call him, and the wolf that was Daisy had taken off after him. Basira wasn’t sure what would happen once her partner caught her prey, but Jon had seemed convinced that whatever she would do, it would put an end to Magnus for good.</p><p>“I’m not sure,” Jon said slowly. “My best guess at this point is that once she catches Magnus, the hunt-magic will urge her on to new targets, and the wolf will keep hunting until she’s no longer strong enough to hold herself together.”</p><p>“What kind of targets?” Basira asked, stomach sinking.</p><p>Jon shrugged jerkily, mouth going tight. “Whatever seems most likely to give her a good chase, I suspect.”</p><p>“So she might go after people,” Basira said. “Innocent people.”</p><p>“It’s… possible,” Jon replied, but the tightness in his voice made it clear that he thought it was more than likely.</p><p>“Daisy didn’t want to be a monster,” Basira said, trying not to choke on the words. “She trusted me to stop her, if she lost control.”</p><p>“There’s still time—”</p><p>“There’s already been time for her to hurt someone.”</p><p>Jon stopped talking, and his silence was confirmation.</p><p>“It’s my fault,” she told Jon quietly. “If you’d treated her, like you did with Melanie, this wouldn’t have happened. But I asked her not to.”</p><p>Jon studied her. Basira expected him to point out that Daisy embracing her curse had saved them, that if her magic hadn’t had its own form, Magnus would have eaten it, and she’d be gone anyway.</p><p>“Why?” he asked instead.</p><p>Basira scoffs, feeling like the stupidest woman on Earth. “I thought it would change her.”</p><p>“It would have,” Jon replied slowly, “but so will this. People change, Basira.”</p><p>“I <em>know </em>that,” she hissed. “Of course I know that, I just… I thought she would leave me. Obviously I feel like an idiot now.”</p><p>Jon was quiet for a long moment. Basira waited for condemnation—he could be incredibly harsh, she’d learned, with people who’d made what he thought was a stupid mistake.</p><p>“Whatever else is or isn’t in her soul,” he said finally, voice carefully neutral, “I’ve Seen how deeply she holds you. I don’t think there’s much you could do, to make her leave you.”</p><p>No scolding, but no absolution. Not that Basira had wanted absolution from him, any more than she wanted his empty reassurance.</p><p>“Can you use it to find her?” she asked instead. “Call her back, or at least just—tell me where she is?”</p><p>“I don’t think so,” Jon said, looking down at his hands. “I told you yesterday, it’s impossible to see one that far away without the Watcher’s Crown—”</p><p>“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that,” Basira said. “The way I understood it, you <em>are </em>the Watcher’s Crown now. All the magic that was stored in it, that’s part of you now.”</p><p>Jon’s eyes flickered quickly up at Basira’s face, then away, and he sighed.</p><p>“Yes, that’s right.”</p><p>“Don’t worry, I’m not coming after you next,” Basira sighed, then fixed him with a serious look. “Not unless you start trying to pull the same shit as Elias.”</p><p>“No, I—I wouldn’t,” Jon stuttered.</p><p>“Yeah, got that impression,” Basira replied, rolling her eyes. “Doesn’t mean you can’t make yourself useful, as long as you’re not hurting anyone.”</p><p>Jon sighed, shutting his eyes. “I’ll… try, then.”</p><p>When his eyes opened, they were the same electric green that Magnus’ had been in the end, and Basira stiffened, resisting the urge to go for her sword. He stared into her for a long moment, and then his gaze scanned to her left, chin tucking as he looked slightly down to follow some invisible thread.</p><p>“She’s running, I think,” Jon said distantly. “She’s still chasing Magnus, now, but—she can feel me watching, I think, she’s slowing down…”</p><p>“Where is she?” Basira demanded, leaning forward. If Daisy was still chasing Magnus, it meant she hadn’t come back because the mission wasn’t over, not because she’d chosen something else. She might still come back when she was done—maybe Basira could find her, help somehow, convince her to come home before she did anything worse.</p><p>Jon’s mouth was twisted in a frown, eyes still intent. “She’s… she’s turning around.”</p><p>“That’s not—” Basira stopped. “She’s coming back?”</p><p>That terrible hope in her chest grew claws as Jon’s head shifted minutely, turning back toward Basira.</p><p>“Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it,” he said, and Basira shook her head.</p><p>“I’m not doing anything,” she insisted. It was Daisy, she was coming back after all—</p><p>Jon twisted in his chair, turning to the barred window, and a flash of red squeezed through the cracks. It shot directly for Basira, who stumbled and fell from her chair under the warm weight of it.</p><p>“Daisy—”</p><p>Basira sat up, pushing against the wolf’s bulk to give herself the space to move. A warm snout nudged itself beneath her chin, and Basira’s arms rose involuntarily, her fingers burying themselves in thick red-brown fur.</p><p>“Her hair is blonde,” she objected idiotically—the thought had occurred to her last night, but she’d dismissed it until just now—and Jon laughed.</p><p>“I mean, neither my hair nor my skin is green,” he pointed out. “Neither were my eyes, before. Apparently magical alignments have colors.”</p><p>Daisy huffed quietly against Basira’s collarbones as Basira smiled helplessly, soft ears flicking and brushing her cheek. Basira wondered if Daisy could understand them, or if she was simply reacting to Basira’s amusement.</p><p>“How do I… How does she go back?”</p><p>“I… I’m not sure how to explain,” Jon replied. “It would always just… happen, and with the binding I’m entirely conscious—maybe if she touches her body?”</p><p>It was worth a try. Basira clambered to her feet, Daisy politely pulling back to make room. The wolf watched Basira intently as she stepped toward the bed, taking hold of Daisy’s limp hand.</p><p>“Can you… come here?” Basira asked her, kneeling next to the bed and beckoning with her other hand. Daisy pawed closer, eyes still fixed on Basira, before she glanced at the hand. Then, slowly, she closed her eyes and leaned forward.</p><p>Basira couldn’t quite follow what happened next, how the wolf folded itself into nothing against Daisy’s palm—but she knew the moment it was done, because Daisy gasped, eyes flying open.</p><p>“Basira, the bracelet,” Jon called, but Basira was already slipping it off her own wrist and onto Daisy’s.</p><p>Daisy gasped, eyes scanning the room until she found Basira and leaned toward her.</p><p>“You’re alright,” she said softly. “I—I was afraid—”</p><p>“I’m fine,” Basira assured her, feeling tears finally start to burn at her eyes. “I’m… I’m totally fine, are you—”</p><p>“I’m okay,” Daisy replied, a smile spreading across her face.</p><p>“Never do that again,” Basira gasped, leaning forward onto the bed. Daisy reached up to touch her face gently, and Basira held back a sob at the brush of callused fingers against her cheek. “You scared the hell out of me.”</p><p>“I’m sorry.”</p><p>Basira shook her head. Jon had left the room, she noted absently as she dragged herself off her knees to sit on the bed.“It’s okay,” she whispered, pressing her head into Daisy’s chest and relishing the quick, excited pounding of her heart, “because—you came back.”</p><p>“Basira.” Daisy’s tone was almost incredulous, but when she pulled Basira up to rest their foreheads together, she was smiling wide. “Of course I came back.”</p><p>
  
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  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The artist for this chapter wished to remain anonymous.</p>
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